Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/20/22 13:28, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:

> Hi Keith,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ietf<[e-mail]>  On Behalf Of Keith Moore
>> Sent: 18 June 2022 02:45
>> To:[e-mail]
>> Subject: Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants
>>
>> On 6/17/22 21:11, Wes Hardaker wrote:
>>
>>> A nice aspect about the IETF is that new drafts and proposals require
>>> others to agree to its merits and approach before it will be adopted.
>>> Thus, if someone doesn't have the time to write a constructive review of
>>> an idea, then the saying "if you don't have something nice to say, then
>>> don't say anything at all" actually works.
>> I disagree, at least as a general statement.  Of course, not every
>> participant who understands why something is a Bad Idea needs to take
>> the time to write a constructive review.   But expecting that someone
>> else will write a constructive review is approximately like asking a
>> large group of people "will somebody do this <unpleasant and thankless
>> task>?"   The chances are good that most or all of that group will see
>> that task as Somebody Else's Problem.
> I'm trying to understand what you are really expecting IETF newcomers to know or do.

It's a hard problem.   Before my first IETF I had already read through 
the relevant RFCs and drafts on the subjects I was interested in.   But 
the Internet was smaller and less diverse then.   It wasn't hard to know 
enough about email, ftp, lpr, telnet, etc. to usefully participate in a 
discussion.   These days you have to know a lot more to participate 
usefully than you did 30 years ago.

I've occasionally thought that IETF should maintain an Internet 101 
course for newcomers, outlining the basics of core Internet protocols, 
some of the fundamental principles and design decisions, etc.   Such as 
why IP addresses aren't assigned geographically, or why the Internet 
uses packet switching rather than circuit switching.   Then at least if 
someone's arguing for a significant change, they should understand what 
they're up against.

> I presume that you are not asking them to review 20+ years of email/discussion across multiple WGs before they post a new idea?  Am I also right to presume that you agree that it would be wrong to have harsh reviews and criticism directed at them just because they lack the historical knowledge that there seems to be no easy way for them to obtain?
Reading this, the question that comes to my mind is why in the world we 
expect people who have very little knowledge and experience of Internet 
protocols, to be able to participate meaningfully in IETF?

Answer: we don't.   Just because there's no entrance exam to participate 
in IETF, doesn't mean we don't expect people to know what they're 
talking about.

And it clearly doesn't scale to expect experienced people to spend 
significant amounts of their time explaining basic things about the 
Internet to newcomers.

Truth is, IETF has had this problem to some degree ever since I've got 
involved circa 1990.   But the ratio of newcomers to experienced people 
might be higher now than it used to be.

> I also agree with PHB's comments, that ideas that have been dismissed in the past may have been so for many different reasons and re-evaluating an approach may reasonably come to a different conclusion.
I've also said something similar, which is that conditions change over 
time, and the conditions that once compelled a particular decision may 
have changed enough since then to warrant revisiting that decision.
>    I'm not saying that we should relitigate every idea forever, but I suspect that many new ideas that IETF ends up working on are variations of similar ideas that have been considered in the past, we are protocol designers and engineers and the vast majority of decisions that we make are technical compromises between competing requirements, and just because an idea has historically worked reasonably doesn't necessarily mean that it is still the best approach today.
Agree, it doesn't.   And yet, IETF's job is to develop and encourage 
standardization, and that's almost the opposite of doing the same thing 
in N different ways.   Failure to resolve fundamental design decision is 
one of the IETF's big problems these days, IMO.
> If a new draft is an obviously naïve idea, then normally it shouldn't take more than a few sentences to explain why that approach doesn't work.
I think that's more wishful thinking than reality.   Some subjects are 
VERY subtle.
> I don't think that anyone is saying that we shouldn’t provide that feedback, but the observation is that if we provide that feedback in a very negative way then it is likely to drive that person away, whereas if we try and provide that feedback in a more constructive way then there is a possibility that we inspire the individual to participate in the IETF even though the original idea/reason that they came to the IETF might not be so great (perhaps due to the lack of experience and domain knowledge).
We REALLY need to get past the notion that Bad People Discouraging 
Newcomers are the problem with IETF.   I'm 100% serious.   Our problems 
are MUCH deeper than that, and that kind of argument is inherently 
divisive because it encourages efforts to get rid of and/or marginalize 
the supposed Bad People.   That kind of thinking is toxic, and utterly 
incompatible with building consensus.
> If a given WG keeps receiving the same ideas again and again, then maybe the WG members could arrange a hackathon before the next IETF meeting to write up a quick wiki explaining commonly presented ideas and the reasons why those ideas have been rejected previously.  This would seem to help both educate the newcomers and perhaps reduce some of the apparent animosity towards newcomers in some WGs?
>
> But, for me:
>
> - If the IETF stops being open to new ideas and sensible evolution of existing protocols then overtime it will likely become less relevant.  Communities will form together and develop their ideas elsewhere, and the IETF eventually becomes obsolete.
Agree with this much.   But neither can IETF expect to have a monopoly 
on Truth or Goodness or Rightness or whatever other virtue in Internet 
protocols.   There will always be groups that try to do things in 
different ways than IETF does, and sometimes their efforts will be 
successful.
> - Similarly, if we continually discourage newcomers from participating in the IETF (e.g., because their expectations of reasonable conduct and communication are apparently incompatible with some of the older IETFers) then the numbers of participants will dwindle as the older IETFs retire or find other things that they want to spend their precious time on.

Shall we rather drive away many of our experienced participants along 
with their wisdom?  Or only accept wisdom from people who adhere to the 
arbitrary Niceness Standards of the Politeness Police?    For a whole 
lot of reasons, that's ridiculous (actually I'm being imprecise here, 
but offhand I can't think of any words for it that wouldn't be seen by 
some as insulting to the mentally ill).   First and foremost, the 
Politeness Police aren't even remotely value neutral - they have their 
own technical, political, and/or economic agendas, and they don't 
hesitate to use accusations of "impoliteness" (or worse) to suppress 
opinions that are inconvenient to them for any reason at all that serves 
their interest.   Secondly, truth hurts sometimes.   Sometimes others' 
ideas really are better, sometimes reality doesn't really lend itself to 
creating the world some of us want, etc.   Promoting denial is 
inconsistent with IETF's mission.

I will repeat this as often as is necessary: /You cannot make IETF more 
inclusive by trying to exclude people you don't like./ It's an 
oxymoron.   If that's what someone is trying to do, they should at least 
have the decency to admit that what they're really trying to do is 
promote arbitrary prejudice as if it were a virtue.  It's not.

>> And sometimes Bad Ideas start to get traction from inexperienced people,
>> after which it becomes fairly difficult to slow them down.
> Perhaps the inexperienced people are not presenting a "Bad Idea" at all, but it is actually now a "Good Idea", but instead it is older experienced IETF folks who are resistant to change.
Yes, and I said something very similar myself.
>> I see this as sort of a structural problem with IETF.    Most people
>> don't like to deliver bad news.
> Hum, I thought that the origin of this thread was that some IETF participants are only too happy to deliver bad news, and it is the way that there are delivering that feedback that is putting off some, perhaps many, new participants.
For reasons stated above, I emphatically disagree with, and object to, 
that characterization.

Can we please dispense with the ageist prejudice?
>> Lack of attention is a different problem than lack of clue. Truly Bad
>> Ideas sometimes find significant popular support.
> If those ideas are gaining significant popular support (i.e., consensus) then perhaps that is because they are not necessarily a bad idea at all, and perhaps those ideas are finding significant popular support because the technical arguments against trying that idea or approach are weak or subjective.

No, gaining significant popular support isn't at all the same thing as 
consensus.   Not even close.  Sometimes a few people "in the rough" are 
actually right, and that's why IETF isn't a popularity contest.

Fundamentally it's incorrect to assume that just because a lot of people 
want to do something, that it's the right thing to do.

>
>> I don't think there's any way to get around it:  Sometimes we need
>> people to object to popular but Bad ideas, and sometimes those
>> explanations will not satisfy the supporters of Bad Ideas. And we need
>> to NOT rely on only those with appointed positions to do those jobs.
> This sounds remarkably like "RFC 8962: Establishing the Protocol Police" to me.

It's closer to the opposite.

Keith