Re: tone policing

"Bron Gondwana" <brong@fastmailteam.com> Mon, 09 September 2019 23:32 UTC

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Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 09:32:12 +1000
From: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmailteam.com>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: tone policing
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On Tue, Sep 10, 2019, at 09:20, Dan Harkins wrote:
> 
>  Hi Joel,
> 
> On 9/9/19 3:43 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> > Dan, you asked for specific examples of speech whose acceptability has 
> > changed.
> >
> > A clear and simple example is personal attacks. It is no longer 
> > acceptable (or at least, we try to make it impossible) to respond to 
> > an argument by saying "you do not know what you are talking about, so 
> > we should ignore your input." Other even more extreme and personal 
> > comments were once accepted in this community. they are not accepted 
> > any longer.
> 
>  I witnessed someone at the mic tell a presenter that his was the 
> worst idea
> in the history of the IETF. That's not really acceptable but it was also 
> way back
> in the 20th century. 

I last saw something like that at the BIMI BOF in Prague at IETF104. Not quite "the worst idea in the history of the IETF", but a very strong and emotional "this is a horribly bad idea and I strongly oppose the IETF doing any work in this area and I will fight you to the death and die on this hill".

And I'm glad people can say that about ideas. I disagree on this specific topic, but I do think the IETF needs the ability to say "not everything is a good idea"!

I didn't take notes about who said that, which is probably a good thing :) I took notes during that session, so I know the concepts raised, but I didn't note who raised all of them.

> I haven't heard that kind of talk in 2 decades. 
> Admittedly
> I tend to hang out with a small group of people and probably missed some 
> egregious
> behavior but I don't think personal attacks have ever been OK.

But it wasn't "you're bad people", it was "this is a bad idea". Keeping that distinction is 100% a good thing.

I had a good chat with the proponents of BIMI afterwards, and they were not dissuaded by their experience, which is good - but I can imagine it would have turned away people who weren't prepared for being told so forcefully that their idea was awful.

Bron.

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 Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
 brong@fastmailteam.com