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

[Adam Roach <[e-mail]>]

On 10/2/22 10:02, Keith Moore wrote:
> To me what is toxic is the intolerance of the expression of 
> alternative views. 


I trust that the misdirection from "disruptive behavior" to "unpopular 
opinion" was unintentional.

There's nothing inherently wrong with putting forth arguments of the 
form "I don't think the IETF should engage in this kind of work because 
<list of one or more good faith reasons>, and I think the negative 
impact will be X <and Y and Z, as necessary>," even if that position is 
extremely unpopular.

To be clear, they're not unrelated concepts; they're just not the same 
thing: unpopular opinions can become disruptive behavior when consensus 
is declared, those opinions are properly determined to be "in the 
rough," and their proponents insist on re-litigating those issues 
anyway. That kind of behavior blocks progress. (Did the person who 
called consensus get it wrong? That's always possible, and that's why we 
have an appeals process. I want to be clear that appeals are not the 
same thing as repeatedly attempting to re-litigate closed issues in the 
same forum.)

But in many ways, none of that is really applicable here. Once we reach 
a point that someone's reaction to the Executive Director of the IETF 
asking for community input on in-person meetings is to respond with a 
hostile mini-rant about a tenuously related tweet that he found 
elsewhere, it's not even plausibly related to "alternative views" in a 
way that could prompt your (again, presumably unintentional) 
misdirection. It's about whether we tolerate that kind of unfettered 
jackassery on our mailing lists, regardless of the opinions they express.

/a