Re: Terminology discussion threads

Dan Harkins <dharkins@lounge.org> Fri, 14 August 2020 18:11 UTC

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Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:11:28 -0700
From: Dan Harkins <dharkins@lounge.org>
Subject: Re: Terminology discussion threads
In-reply-to: <ed227fd5-3277-d7a9-f93d-b259944009d6@huitema.net>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Cc: Eric Rescorla <ekr@rtfm.com>, Paul Wouters <paul@nohats.ca>
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On 8/14/20 10:30 AM, Christian Huitema wrote:
> On 8/14/2020 9:44 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
>> Thanks Paul. Well, said.
>>
>> Despite the long history of the IETF discussion list being awful, I've
>> felt an obligation to stay on it. However, it has now become so bad
>> that I can longer do so.
>>
>> I would like to thank the IESG for creating the last call list so
>> that it is still possible to participate in the business of the IETF
>> without being part of this toxic environment. I'll see you there
>> and in the WGs.
> There is something systemic here. We see that behavior too many times. I
> was at the receiving end of similar abuses during the RFC-ED discussions
> last year and I feel the pain for Alissa, but there are many more
> examples. The IETF list functions as some kind of general assembly, but
> without any rules of order. The loudest voices dominate the stream and
> skew the consensus, which encourages a loudest-voice behavior and
> discourages consensus building.
>
> The question is, what to do?

   How about nothing? All these public "I'm leaving" emails have one thing
in common: they say they're going to go back and focus on technology and
the good work done in working groups. So hurray for that! We should all do
that.

   This language policing exercise with draft-knodel-terminology and the 
IESG
statement is a huge distraction.

   Culture changes organically, not by diktats from on high. If IETF 
language
is going to change it will change because we all start speaking differently
in our interactions with others and it will change gradually over time.

   Let's go back to writing good technical documents describing good 
protocols.
We can all use a reminder that our target audience is global and we should
avoid idioms which tend to translate poorly. But no one is hurting 
anyone else
by using state of the art terminology (like "master key") and we don't 
need to
come up with new ways to describe these things.

   Fundamentally, we don't have a problem with language in RFCs so we don't
need to "fix" that which is not broken. We might have a problem with abusive
language on mailing lists (guilty as charged) but that's different and it is
best solved differently.

   regards,

   Dan.