Re: [Terminology] Recent posts to the terminology mailing list

[Nick Doty <[e-mail]>]

Hi Rob,

On Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 4:34 PM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwilton=
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've recently joined Lars and Sean as a co-moderator for this list.
>

Thank you for helping with moderation of this list, which is needed.


> I would like to send a blanket reminder to all subscribed to this mailing
> list that the IETF goal is to make the Internet better.  I believe that the
> most effective way to achieve that is for all participants to communicate
> in a constructive way that is respectful to other participants.  Further, I
> would like to add that I believe the vast majority of IETF participants
> engage in such a way.
>
> In some cases, the recent postings to this mailing list have been neither
> constructive nor respectful and I have contacted the individual(s) involved
> to politely request that they moderate how they construct their messages.
>
> I see that there is no benefit in further discussing
> draft-knodel-terminology on this list.  As the ISE has made clear (as per
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/l4vjg55V6lgxB-Yn_IuPGnjoe9s/),
> the decision as to whether to publish this draft is an ISE decision and
> does not require or benefit from any form of IETF consensus or discussion.
>
> At the moment, I believe that the only terminology related work happening
> in the IETF is the implementation of the IESG Statement on Inclusive
> language,
> https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/on-inclusive-language/.
> As far as I understand it, the current process is working well in a
> reasonable and proportionate way.
>
> I would like to keep the terminology mailing list open to ensure that IETF
> has a place for any necessary terminology related discussions, where IETF
> participants are free to choose to subscribe or unsubscribe based on their
> interest.
>

Can you update the listinfo page to clarify the current purpose of the
mailing list and to identify the moderators of the list? Currently, that
information is out of date or missing. The listinfo page indicates that
this is the list of the TERM WG, which might indicate to subscribers that
there are WG chairs who can follow BCP 94 in explicitly moderating the
mailing list and stopping disruptive behavior.

I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm fine with keeping the list
open for discussion of terminology questions, the IESG statement and how to
make use of the NIST report. As I recall, it was used for that regarding
NTP and interactions with IEEE, which seemed helpful.
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/L517hr-i6qASoTDWbeuH23XSZvM/

On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 11:02 AM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwilton=
[e-mail]> wrote:

> My reasoning for wanting to keep the list open is not because I expect
> much further discussion, but I would rather that any terminology related
> discussion occurs on this list than end back on [e-mail],
> particularly because it seems that this is an emotive topic and these
> discussions unfortunately bring out uncivil behaviour from some people.  I
> see that having a separate list allows for such discussions to occur
> (freedom of speech) without forcing the discussion onto the larger lists of
> subscribers on [e-mail] who are presumably less interested in these
> discussions (freedom of listening to the free speech), given that
> relatively few of the [e-mail] subscribers are also subscribed to
> the terminology list.
>

I hope we agree that uncivil, unconstructive, disrespectful behavior is
unwelcome on IETF mailing lists whether the list has very many subscribers
or is a smaller list focused on a particular topic. I do not subscribe to
[e-mail] as it's well-known that it regularly contains toxic
discussion. I would like to continue to subscribe to and contribute to
smaller mailing lists on work topics of interest, like this one. I do not
believe the purpose of this list is to divert uncivil behavior from the
ietf list.

I'm not sure this is very directly related to freedom of speech, although
that term can often be used in different senses. There are many outlets for
publishing speech of all kinds, including insults towards individuals or
groups one dislikes, on the Internet, among them blogs, newsletters and
social media. But as you have noted, IETF mailing lists have more specific
purposes and guidelines for conduct, as described in BCP 54, for example.


> Having something like BCP45bis for all moderated lists would probably
> generally be helpful for the IETF, but any of these process type documents
> seem to take quite a lot of effort/energy to progress.  But always happy if
> someone from the community wants to try and pick this up and drive this,
> presumably via Gendispatch.
>

My understanding was that BCP 54 applied to all IETF participation,
including in-person and all IETF mailing lists. But if the scope of BCP 94
or BCP 25 are limited only to chartered WG mailing lists and BCP 45 is
limited to the [e-mail] list, then it does seem like there is an
important gap that needs to be filled so that all our mailing lists can be
regularly moderated without always needing direct IESG involvement.


> In terms of my role, no I'm not an SAA, just a list owner with a role to
> moderate the list alongside Lars and Sean.  I was added by Lars because we
> thought that he was the only list owner at the time and thought that it
> would be helpful if the moderation was handled by someone else.  I.e.,
> generally, I find that the IESG members go out of their way to try and be
> impartial and be seen to be impartial.  We subsequently found that Sean was
> also a moderator.  Hopefully, everyone will be constructive and respectful
> to each other and no further moderation will be necessary.
>

If list moderators are documented publicly somewhere, I think that would
help with this confusion.

Thanks again,
Nick