Re: [Terminology] offensive terminology draft progressing on independent stream

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

On 8/27/21 1:40 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>> Il 27/08/2021 07:01 Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
>>
>>   
>> Hat on as a member of the Independent Stream Editorial Board
>> (ISEB, https://www.rfc-editor.org/about/iseb/).
>>
>> There is a review process for Independent Stream documents, and
>> there's no automatic right to publication.
> However, the rejection of that draft might be misinterpreted, or misconstrued, as another proof of the alleged racism of the IETF community, especially by people who are not its members and who do not understand how the process works. The ISEB should put special care in discussing the issue with the authors so that the result of the editorial process is not viewed as controversial.

   Racism against whom? The authors?

   That's one of the problems with this draft. It's starts with an 
assumption and
any attempt to falsify that assumption is taken as proof of its 
validity. The
notion that denial of racism is evidence of racism is akin to the "when 
did you
stop beating your wife?" accusation.

   Publication of this draft would be misunderstood by the exact community
you talk about-- people who are not members and who do not understand how
the process works. There are lots of people who think "oh, RFC... that's a
standard." And those people would take an RFC that talks about "the racists
amongst us [at the IETF]" as if it had the imprimatur of the IETF.

   Given that the existence of this draft was already used by an author to
promote language policing in at least one other organization (IEEE 802) 
I can
only assume that publication of this draft would result in more of the same
but with more authority, an actual RFC behind it-- "look, there's an actual
RFC on the subject that you can refer to!"

   This draft needs to die.

   Dan.

-- 
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius