Re: [Last-Call] Last Call: BCP 83 PR-Action Against Dan Harkins

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 10/6/22 17:19, Bless, Roland (TM) wrote:

> Sorry, I'm not a native speaker and to me lampooning is a kind of
> humiliation. In order to help you understand the problem, let me
> take Dan's line of argumentation and transfer it to another scenario:
> guess how a disabled person, e.g., needing a wheelchair, feels if
> someone claims that this person is just doing that in order to get
> "privileges" like reserved parking lots or seats in the first row etc.?
Oh sure, and I've even made a similar mistake before.    Fortunately my 
friend with cystic fibrosis was patient and kind, and was able to simply 
explain to me that yes, sometimes she really did have trouble breathing 
and needed to use a handicapped parking space just so she could walk 
from her car to the door.  (Handicaps are not always obvious.)
> Nevertheless, you should accept that there are obviously people in the
> IETF community that interpret Dan's writing as being offensive or even
> racist.
I do understand that.  But those are some pretty serious accusations to 
make out of a mere misunderstanding.   And when /any/ person is accused 
of something as despised as racism, I suspect their normal reaction is 
to be defensive rather than to ask whether (and how) there might be some 
truth in it.
> Ok, apparently we have quite different views on that, but as I already
> wrote: as soon as there is feedback that Dan's messages are perceived
> as being offensive (and this feedback has been given several times),
> an adequate reaction should have been to stop writing these kind of
> messages, but Dan deliberately continued to write teasing messages.

For me the question is whether there was sufficient explanation of which 
kinds of messages were causing the problem, and why. It's not always 
obvious to everyone.

Most of the messages cited in the Last Call seemed fairly inoffensive to 
me, and for many of them I could not be sure I had identified what IESG 
were objecting to.

Keith