[Mod-discuss] Re: disliking (bits of) the draft is not about incompetence or corruption

[Simon Josefsson <[e-mail]>]

Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I agree with all of the below.  I also understand why Stephen is
> holding his nose- this is a professional organization not a free
> speech stump.  I would also suggest that the onus is on proponents of
> this work (of which I include myself) to both provide comment to the
> moderators when they develop guidance, to engage with working group
> chairs and others when they are implementing that guidance, and to
> raise concerns with the IESG and IAB when there are abuses.  I don't
> expect that to happen too often, but I expect it will happen.

To me, that approach is a reason for a concern.  It seems to confirm the
"we know what we are doing, just let us do it" mentality that I perceive
is the philosophy behind this approach.  What you are suggesting is that
some people who will not be accountable for their actions, nor within
reach for any appeals, will oversight the modp process for as long as it
is running, and that this situation is actually used as argument that we
should trust the process more.

I'm happy you and others invest time in trying to improve matters, and I
don't doubt your motives to genuinely help and improve things, but I
just find the approach to achieve these goals to be at odds with how I
perceive facts-based engineering discussions and decisions are made, and
how to foster the community in which they occur in.

I recall some social study on how to setup effective groups of
engineers, and very few parameters like educational background, past
successes, diversity, physical vs online collaboration etc made much of
a difference.  But what was correlated with success was each
participants' feeling that they could freely speak their mind, to
challenge the inherent group thinking in any social construct.  I fear
this effort will deminish that feeling among IETF participants, and that
this works against our stated goals.

/Simon


> Eliot
>
> On 07.10.2025 09:40, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>
>> Hiya,
>>
>> I think about 3 different people have characterised people (like
>> me) who aren't keen on the draft as follows:
>>
>> > others believe the opposite (corruption and/or incompetence).
>>
>> I think that's incorrect. I believe that honest and competent
>> moderators could damage the IETF.
>>
>> As background, I grew up in a society that, at the time, had a
>> lot of censorship. I'd say most of the censors were competent
>> and not corrupt - they just had a different set of beliefs as
>> to what was reasonable, compared to current Irish society. But
>> that didn't stop them banning lots of things, including the
>> Monty Python movie the life of brian. (See [1] for an amusing
>> retrospective article about that:-)
>>
>> One might well argue that that's not going to happen with the
>> mod-team envisaged here, and I'd probably agree, but then I look
>> at the 180-degree handbrake turns related to DEI recently carried
>> out by sets of commercial entities - regardless of what one thinks
>> about DEI, that ability to totally change tack with the prevailing
>> political winds, to me indicates that a mod-team that's out of
>> whack with what the IETF wants is a non-negligible risk.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> S.
>>
>> PS: I've already said that I'm ok with holding my nose and seeing
>> the draft progress. The above doesn't change that.
>>
>> [1]
>> https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/an-awful-dump-the-ireland-that-banned-monty-python-s-life-of-brian-1.3807270
>>
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