Subject: Tolerance

From: Ole Troan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2019 17:52:22 +0200

I am concerned about the heavy handedness Michael StJohns received from the sergeant at arms and the IETF leadership. To me this feels like bullying and I would not have liked this to happen to me. This behavior by the leadership scares me away, the exact opposite of what is said to be intended. 

If we want diversity and tolerance, is it not exactly messages of criticism and challenges of power structures and the established truths we should be accepting of?

I at least are often more comfortable dealing with machines than humans. I am not very great at expressing myself and winning others over, and when nervous, not rarely saying the complete wrong thing.

If the requirements for participating here is going to be so high that understanding the finer nuances of the usage of stupidity is required unless one is called unprofessional, then I as a non-native English speaker is reluctant to participate. Certainly these sets of threads, portraying to make the IETF more accessible has done more to make me avoid voicing my opinion on the IETF mailing list than anything I have read here over the last 20 years. 

Play the ball not the man. 

Ole

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2019 20:28:28 +0200

Ole

I think this is a close call.  On the one hand, I understand your point: one could think that Ben jumped the gun.  On the other hand, maybe our standards really aren’t high enough, and we should be cautious about our language.  It’s an especially tough call when we have an emotional issue at hand.  And it’s even tougher if you don’t personally know or have a good feel for the individual.

For those who don’t know Mike, he is very much the gentleman who is every bit as passionate about this organization as he was when he paid the bills for it lo those many years ago.  For those who don’t know Ben, he is a deeply thoughtful person who is concerned as SAA about seeing that people not be deterred from participating in a constructive manner.

In fact to me, what is very difficult about this whole interchange is that everyone who has participated has done so with the best of intentions toward the organization and the Internet.  Never the less, there is a lack of trust on the part at least some towards others.  We need to work on that, as a community.

Eliot

> On 5 Jul 2019, at 17:52, Ole Troan <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2019 20:21:11 -0400

Hi Ole,

Thanks for your feedback. I apologize if my message on July 2 scares you away from voicing your opinion. 

Regards,
Alissa

> On Jul 5, 2019, at 11:52 AM, Ole Troan <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:43:39 +0000 (UTC)

"Play the ball not the man"?
outrageously sexist in its view of who is eligible to play.
recommended reading for your thoughtcrime:https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-guerra-feminism-01 

Lloyd [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:43:39 +0000 (UTC)

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2019 12:27:40 -0400

> you away from voicing your opinion.

Without too much comment, I wanted to point at two items that the I*  
and community may want to consider going forward: 
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/when-silence-spells-trouble-at-work and a 
wiki page that references it: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_dissent especially the 
discussion under 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_dissent#Whistle-blowing

"Unprofessional"  (RFC3005's "Unprofessional commentary") has a lot of 
meanings, and Webster has it as "**not exhibiting a courteous, 
conscientious, or generally businesslike manner in the workplace", but 
at times there will be a conflict between what's perceived as 
"courteous" and what's "conscientious".

Mike

>
>> On Jul 5, 2019, at 11:52 AM, Ole Troan <[email-masked] 
>> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>> I am concerned about the heavy handedness Michael StJohns received 
>> from the sergeant at arms and the IETF leadership. To me this feels 
>> like bullying and I would not have liked this to happen to me. This 
>> behavior by the leadership scares me away, the exact opposite of what 
>> is said to be intended.
>>
>> If we want diversity and tolerance, is it not exactly messages of 
>> criticism and challenges of power structures and the established 
>> truths we should be accepting of?
>>
>> I at least are often more comfortable dealing with machines than 
>> humans. I am not very great at expressing myself and winning others 
>> over, and when nervous, not rarely saying the complete wrong thing.
>>
>> If the requirements for participating here is going to be so high 
>> that understanding the finer nuances of the usage of stupidity is 
>> required unless one is called unprofessional, then I as a non-native 
>> English speaker is reluctant to participate. Certainly these sets of 
>> threads, portraying to make the IETF more accessible has done more to 
>> make me avoid voicing my opinion on the IETF mailing list than 
>> anything I have read here over the last 20 years.
>>

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2019 10:00:10 -0800

> "courteous" and what's "conscientious".

I don't think anybody's arguing that people shouldn't make
the technical points that need to be made.  However, if the
goal is persuasion, which I think we probably agree it is
(or should be) that suggests that the argument, in both
substance and form, should be persuasive rather than
alienating.

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]

Software longa, hardware brevis

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2019 16:12:49 -0400

Hi Melinda - inline..

> substance and form, should be persuasive rather than

I strongly agree with the above,  especially that the goal of a 
technical discussion is persuasion leading to agreement or at least 
grumpy acquiescence.  But for fact-finding and accountability 
discussions, the model probably needs to be persistence when faced with 
answers or explanations that are not forthcoming, that are incomplete or 
that are inconsistent with known facts.

IMO, "Alienating" is a very strange word to compare and contrast with 
persuasion.  Maybe "browbeating" or "intimidating" or "hectoring"?  I 
think that line is probably clear enough on the technical side, but I 
wonder how it gets reconciled on the accountability side? At some point, 
if answers are not forthcoming, persistent questioning can be probably 
be seen as one of those three - especially by those being questioned.  
The question then becomes whether it's the inquirer's fault for keeping 
up the questioning or the target's fault for failing to answer fully and 
truthfully (or for completeness some blend of the two).  I refer you 
back again to the "Organization Dissent" wiki page and the discussion of 
whistle blowers.

In the current discussion I believe I have a reasonable understanding of 
what and when.  I still lack clarity on why, how and who and I expect 
getting answers to those questions to be a substantial part of the 
discussion at the plenary this coming meeting along with understanding 
what remediations need to be done.  In other words - "accountability 
through persistence".

> adjective: *conscientious*
> 1.
> (of a person) wishing to do what is right, especially to do one's work 
> or duty well and thoroughly.

Mike

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2019 12:31:05 -0800

On 7/13/19 12:12 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> persuasion. 

I think it's one of several words that can be used to describe
what's happening.  I do think that the quality of discourse
(using both "quality" and "discourse" somewhat broadly, here)
in the IETF puts off potential new participants coming from
communities where "browbeating," "intimidating," and
"hectoring" are not tolerated, and "alienating" applies in
that case.  Possibly more significantly, bullying is not
employed in service to persuasion, but to get the other
person to shut up and go away.  That's alienation, as well.
That's about winning.  It absolutely is not about finding the best
technical outcome.  (It's also antithetical to looking for consensus.)
Unfortunately I think the current situation is self-perpetuating,
as newer people either model the behavior they see around them
or throw their hands up and leave.

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2019 13:15:35 -0400

On 7/13/19 4:31 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:

> what's happening.

Lots of different things are "happening", even in this very discussion.

Keith

---

From: Jacob Hoffman-Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 09:32:15 -0700

To reinforce what Melinda's saying: I dedicate less time to IETF work 
than I otherwise would, specifically because of the hostile and alien 
nature of debate here. I have colleagues who feel the same way, and 
other colleagues who refrain entirely from participating at the IETF 
because of it.

I also moderate a popular forum, and have found that people model their 
behavior on what they see others do - when hostile posts are left 
unchallenged, more people start posting in a hostile way. That's why 
it's particularly important to maintain the highest standards of 
behavior in online communication - to create a virtuous cycle of 
professionalism rather than a downwards cycle of unprofessional behavior.

It can certainly take a lot longer to write an email that expresses 
disagreement strongly but without attacking the recipients (or other 
parties). Often it takes multiple revisions. But it's worth all of us 
taking the time and making those revisions in order to make the IETF a 
sustainable venue.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 13:50:20 -0400

> other colleagues who refrain entirely from participating at the IETF 

I believe you.   But could you drill down a bit into (i.e. define more 
precisely) "hostile" and/or "alien"?   Because I suspect these words 
mean different things to different people.

I have seen many reasons why people might be reluctant to contribute 
technical input to IETF.   Among these are those that you mention, but 
also (and perhaps more importantly) people who feel that it is "not 
their place" (or to put it differently, it would be "impolite") to offer 
an opinion that conflicts with the opinion of someone with apparently 
higher status.   I saw this a lot when I was on IESG - people who would 
not say what they really thought (no matter how much I tried to 
encourage them) apparently because they thought I might disagree with them.

(My personal belief is that quite often there is not a single right 
answer to a problem, so insisting that someone has to be right and 
others wrong is counterproductive.   But good compromises come from 
having, and respecting, a wide variety of input.   Impassioned 
_technical_ arguments can produce such compromises, but only if 
everyone's dedicated to producing a good result, and has reason to trust 
that the community will encourage and facilitate that.  Sometimes you 
have to get to the root of a disagreement in order to find out what's 
really important, and sometimes that's a frustrating process.)

Also, I have sometimes found input from people who claimed to be 
speaking up for others' right to speak, to itself  have a chilling 
effect on others' willingness to speak up.

I hope there's general agreement that people should be free to 
contribute technical ideas and opinions without fear of reprisal.   
What's the best way to encourage that?

> taking the time and making those revisions in order to make the IETF a 

I certainly agree that personal attacks are inappropriate, and hope 
others also feel that way.

Keith

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 21:51:54 +0100

> mean different things to different people.
Almost certainly the precise meaning taken differs, but the essential
meaning here is that some IETFers choose to be blunt, and this drives
others away.

And make no mistake, this *is* a choice, and I've only ever seen long-time,
"senior", IETFers defend that choice publicly.

> encourage them) apparently because they thought I might disagree with them.
These are other forms of the same problem, and thus have the same solution
- the best way to ensure that diverse opinions are given is to ensure that
we are welcoming to diverse opinions.

This means avoiding being blunt when we offer our opinions, as well as
trying to tease out the useful opinion from the bluntness of others.

To put it another way, we should be conservative in what we send, and
liberal in what we accept from others. Just like that principle, it should
not bar us from noting and rejecting bad input - but we shouldn't let that
be the cause of a fatal error.

I'm glad to see that you note in your example that the people were put off
speaking up by their perception of you. I can't tell you what you did to
give them that opinion - I've a thick enough skin, and I'm certainly guilty
of being overly blunt at times myself, so I'm not the best judge of whether
that was the issue. Nevertheless, I agree with your implication that how
people "in power" behave can have unexpected and highly undesirable
outcomes for the group.

> effect on others' willingness to speak up.

There's an element of truth here, in as much as if the only people who feel
comfortable speaking up are, shall we say, "people who enjoy bluntness" it
has a natural selective effect on the make up of the group; if newcomers
aren't comfortable speaking up themselves, we've already lost, and others
speaking up on their behalf is probably doing as much harm as good.

As yes, I appreciate the irony here.

> What's the best way to encourage that?

Not to retaliate, even where some course correction might be required.
Retaliation is, after all, escalation.

In my opinion, the problem we saw that sparked much of this discussion was
twofold:

a) By describing the actions as stupid, this carried a (unwanted)
implication that those carrying out the action were stupid. Only stupid
people do stupid things, but even clever people can make serious errors.

b) Rather than call out that choice of words but answer the essential
points, the organisation chose instead to chastise the sender publicly and
leave the points unanswered - unwittingly shutting down the discussion.

Put another way, the sender's choice of words added nothing useful to the
discussion, and in fact dissuaded some from offering their own opinions.
The response to it had much the same effect. And of course, the response to
that escalated further. And so on.

> others also feel that way.

Yes - and I note that a public chastising can very easily be a personal
attack of sorts, too.

Dave.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 18:04:38 -0400

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 15, 2019, at 4:51 PM, Dave Cridland <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 18:50, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Almost certainly the precise meaning taken differs, but the essential meaning here is that some IETFers choose to be blunt, and this drives others away.

Could you be more precise about what it means to be “blunt”?  Because I’m not sure that I know what you mean. I can think of several possible alternatives:

- let’s say (for the sake of example) that my informed technical opinion is that NATs pose a grave threat to the security and stability of the internet and to the internet’s ability to support diverse applications. [*]  Is it too “blunt” of me to say so?  Or am I obligated to pretend, for the sake of “politeness” that NATs are somehow more virtuous than that, because others believe that they are?  In other words, do I have an obligation to be dishonest for the sake of protecting others’ egos or their employers’ products?

[*] note: this is just an example; my current position on NATs is more layered and nuanced than that.

- or am I supposed to treat every technical proposal or decision as if it’s a good one, and refrain from pointing out flaws, or refrain from attempting to express just how harmful a proposal or decision appears to me to be?  If I think that launching the spacecraft in below-freezing weather will significantly risk killing the crew, or that a proposed bridge design is likely to fail in a heavy wind, with potential loss of life, am I expected to say that in veiled terms like “I recommend against that”?

- or am I supposed to avoid technical discussion of details of a proposal or decision that might embarrass the person making the proposal or decision?

> 
> And make no mistake, this *is* a choice, and I've only ever seen long-time, "senior", IETFers defend that choice publicly.

It may be that very experienced and competent engineers are more likely to understand the value in it.  IETF was blessed to attract a lot of extremely competent people in its early days.  

> These are other forms of the same problem, and thus have the same solution - the best way to ensure that diverse opinions are given is to ensure that we are welcoming to diverse opinions.

Agree with this much.

> 
> This means avoiding being blunt when we offer our opinions, as well as trying to tease out the useful opinion from the bluntness of others.

I disagree with that generality.  I don’t think it’s welcoming to people to not take them seriously.  One way to not take someone seriously is to humor them when they make bad suggestions and act as if they were good ones.  That’s not to say that I think they should have to endure scathing criticism of their ideas (and certainly not of themselves).  But sometimes it is necessary to be clear.   

> 
> To put it another way, we should be conservative in what we send, and liberal in what we accept from others. Just like that principle, it should not bar us from noting and rejecting bad input - but we shouldn't let that be the cause of a fatal error.

I had started to cite that principle myself but found too many cases for which it produced bad results.  At least we agree that we should be able to reject “bad input”.

> 
> I'm glad to see that you note in your example that the people were put off speaking up by their perception of you.

I’m not sure it was their perception of me personally that deterred them- it could have easily been either (IMO) a harmful form of “politeness” (don’t question someone of higher status) and/or a judgment that disagreeing with someone on IESG (ie someone in a position of power) would invite retaliation from that person.  After all, in a corporate world these are often the norm (or so I’m told).  I regard both ideas as harmful to the practice of engineering no matter what the environment.  (And potentially abusive, if enforced in a work environment.)

> There's an element of truth here, in as much as if the only people who feel comfortable speaking up are, shall we say, "people who enjoy bluntness" it has a natural selective effect on the make up of the group; if newcomers aren't comfortable speaking up themselves, we've already lost, and others speaking up on their behalf is probably doing as much harm as good.
> 
> Not to retaliate, even where some course correction might be required. Retaliation is, after all, escalation.
> 
> In my opinion, the problem we saw that sparked much of this discussion was twofold:
> 
> a) By describing the actions as stupid, this carried a (unwanted) implication that those carrying out the action were stupid. Only stupid people do stupid things, but even clever people can make serious errors.
> 

Disagree.  I don’t consider myself stupid, but I’ve done a lot of stupid things and I don’t mind saying so.  I also generally find it extremely harmful when people take it on themselves to police others’ language.  By all means let’s avoid and discourage direct personal insults of all kinds, but at the same time let’s not be eager to find fault with others’ choice of words.  

Sometimes “stupid” really does seem like the best word to describe an automaton.  I’d be okay with forbidding it if we found or coined a suitable replacement.   But we might be searching a while to develop an adequate vocabulary for the spectrum of things we need to express that won’t offend anybody. 

> b) Rather than call out that choice of words but answer the essential points, the organisation chose instead to chastise the sender publicly and leave the points unanswered - unwittingly shutting down the discussion.

Different people will have different opinions, and I don’t want to add fuel to that particular fire, but my analysis of that conversation was somewhat different.

> Yes - and I note that a public chastising can very easily be a personal attack of sorts, too.

Often is.

Keith

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 18:05:31 -0400

On 7/15/2019 4:51 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
> implication that those carrying out the action were stupid. Only 
> stupid people do stupid things, but even clever people can make 
> serious errors.
>
> points, the organisation chose instead to chastise the sender publicly 
> and leave the points unanswered - unwittingly shutting down the 
> discussion.
>
> Put another way, the sender's choice of words added nothing useful to 
> the discussion, and in fact dissuaded some from offering their own 
> opinions. The response to it had much the same effect. And of course, 
> the response to that escalated further.. And so on.

I really hate to restart this, but what I said was that the "result" was 
"a stupidity".  Language is important.   The proximate actions that 
finally caused the result are mostly still unexplained.  As I explained 
in the second email in the chain, there's enough blame to go around to 
all of us and I happily take the label of "stupid" for not paying more 
attention and not pushing back earlier especially after the RFC++ bof.

In any event, what word or words would you use to describe the avoidable 
result of losing before time our world-class RSE?  My guess is that any 
characterization that you make that's at least half correct and doesn't 
preclude human causes or contributions for the result can be molded, 
twisted or otherwise imputed as being an insult to someone.   And lest 
you misunderstand - that's a rhetorical comment, not an actual demand 
for set of words.

Thanks by the way for noticing (b).

Later, Mike

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 08:33:35 +0100

> you misunderstand - that's a rhetorical comment, not an actual demand
Sorry. I thought a real-world example that was fresh in our minds might
actually be useful, but I was more parenthetical than I should have been
with noting that the term's effects were unwanted. Over the years, I've
seen far worse messages - more aggressive, more ad-hominem, and so on. Some
of them I wrote myself. But language is, as you say, important, and while I
don't doubt you had no intention for it to be taken this way, it clearly
has been by some, and that has had the effect of harming the debate that
you were trying to contribute to. As an example, it's just a drop in the
ocean - but that's part of the problem in itself.

For what it's worth, I'd have used "serious error", or "avoidable mistake",
or some such. But, that is with the benefit of many, many messages of
hindsight. Dealing with actual actions of actual people - as opposed to
purely technical discussions - is much much harder to do.

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:55:58 +0100

On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 23:04, Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Could you be more precise about what it means to be “blunt”?  Because I’m
> not sure that I know what you mean. I can think of several possible
> alternatives:
>
>
Would "unnecessarily aggressive" be clearer? Perhaps simply "unwelcoming"
is enough to cover it.

> - let’s say (for the sake of example) that my informed technical opinion
> is that NATs pose a grave threat to the security and stability of the
> internet and to the internet’s ability to support diverse applications. [*]
>  Is it too “blunt” of me to say so?  Or am I obligated to pretend, for the
> sake of “politeness” that NATs are somehow more virtuous than that, because
> others believe that they are?  In other words, do I have an obligation to
> be dishonest for the sake of protecting others’ egos or their employers’
> products?
>
That's more or less my opinion on NATs too. In fact, I think it was you
that impressed me with that opinion a couple of decades ago. NATs are a
compromised workaround at best, I think, running roughshod over the ability
to have every endpoint on the network addressable and able to host
services. I don't think anyone should take offence at that, though some
people (and, indeed, their employers) might disagree with it. Disagreement
is a precursor to persuasion, after all. I don't think I've suggested
anywhere that one should withhold opinions - in fact, I've tried to suggest
quite the opposite, that everyone should be comfortable to do so.

Politeness surely isn't a bad thing that needs careful protection with
scare-quotes. Surely if you're not polite, you're being impolite? I don't
see how that is a useful strategy for either persuasion or encouraging
debate.

But look at what you're doing here - isn't the premise of your paragraph
here is that I am suggesting, in a debate over how to encourage people to
express opinion, that they should not express their opinions? I can't
decide whether I'd be happier if I were so hopelessly unclear that I gave
that impression, or you were attacking a strawman of your own creation
instead. Either way, you go on to demolish the point with "words" in
"quotes", and lots of rhetorical questions which, to my shame, I have
answered. Now, what is this exchange doing that a simple statement such as
"I think there's no question that any self-censorship of one's opinions
would be extremely harmful, and would cause serious damage to the IETF and
the Internet as a whole" does not do as well, or better? I could agree with
that in principle, of course, but I'd note then that the tone one uses can
act as censorship very effectively too - both on ones own ideas and those
of others. But look at me, blatantly making a strawman. For anyone
watching, I should note for the record that I am not remotely offended, and
furthermore, holding Keith in the highest respect, I do not intend any
offence. Yet I could readily understand being faced with such a style of
argument to be a daunting experience.

In general, I think it's more effective to minimize the emotion transmitted
alongside the opinion, and try to ensure that the phrasing incites the
intellect and not the emotion. It does make it more boring, but I think it
helps overall. And I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has
tried it both ways, and found this way better - go read the IMAP-WG
archives from 15 years ago or so. I had some fiery arguments with Mark back
in the day. I enjoy a bit of sarcasm as much as - no, way more - than the
next man. I've just found it's not an effective method of persuasion.

> - or am I supposed to treat every technical proposal or decision as if
> it’s a good one, and refrain from pointing out flaws, or refrain from
> attempting to express just how harmful a proposal or decision appears to me
> to be?  If I think that launching the spacecraft in below-freezing weather
> will significantly risk killing the crew, or that a proposed bridge design
> is likely to fail in a heavy wind, with potential loss of life, am I
> expected to say that in veiled terms like “I recommend against that”?
>
>
You should read up on Crew Resource Management, which discusses this kind
of behaviour (often with the same examples, so I suspect you know of it) in
intricate detail, but the summary is "no". Pointing out serious issues,
assertively, and explaining why you feel these are serious, should be
welcomed. Treating every technical proposal or decision as if it's made in
good faith, though, is good - and if everyone does that, your warnings of
doom should be more heeded, not less.

But most of what I'm concerned about isn't shielding the leadership likely
to make decisions, but encouraging newcomers to engage - inevitably, as
newcomers, the stakes are much much lower, and the need for feedback less
urgent, so you can deliver the message needed in a calmer way.

> - or am I supposed to avoid technical discussion of details of a proposal
> or decision that might embarrass the person making the proposal or decision?
>
> You're supposed to discuss technical details and decisions in a way that
avoids the embarrassment of the person making the proposal or decision.

>
> And make no mistake, this *is* a choice, and I've only ever seen
> long-time, "senior", IETFers defend that choice publicly.
>
>
> It may be that very experienced and competent engineers are more likely to
> understand the value in it.  IETF was blessed to attract a lot of extremely
> competent people in its early days.
>
>
I think it's more likely that most people who have spent a significant
period of time on these mailing lists are the ones who have grown used to
it and consider it normal, or at least can be comfortable with it.

It's a sort of survivor bias of IETF participants.

When I joined my first IETF list nearly 25 years ago, I was one of the
younger ones. I think I still am. While I appreciate the way the IETF keeps
me feeling young, I'm not entirely convinced this is an overall positive
outcome for the IETF.

> I disagree with that generality.  I don’t think it’s welcoming to people
> to not take them seriously.  One way to not take someone seriously is to
> humor them when they make bad suggestions and act as if they were good
> ones.  That’s not to say that I think they should have to endure scathing
> criticism of their ideas (and certainly not of themselves).  But sometimes
> it is necessary to be clear.
>
>
Yes, you're right. The point I was trying to make was that an opinion
delivered aggressively, or with sarcasm, or whatever remains an opinion. We
are of course free to disagree with it, but as readers, we should try to
understand the actual opinion and disagree with that. I didn't intend to
suggest that all opinions are equally correct, but it is often useful to
understand others' viewpoints and why they hold them. After all, it allows
one to construct more persuasive arguments against them. It is that utility
that I meant by "useful".

> I had started to cite that principle myself but found too many cases for
> which it produced bad results.  At least we agree that we should be able to
> reject “bad input”.
>

Sorry, this was not as clear as I'd have liked.

I actually intended the "bad input" to mean stripping out the
aggressiveness or whatever and rejecting that, so as to concentrate on the
substance. But again that's unclear, since I don't mean to suggest we
cannot reject poor arguments, invalid statements, and so on. We not only
can, we should.

> speaking up by their perception of you.
>
>
> I’m not sure it was their perception of me personally that deterred them-
> it could have easily been either (IMO) a harmful form of “politeness”
> (don’t question someone of higher status) and/or a judgment that
> disagreeing with someone on IESG (ie someone in a position of power) would
> invite retaliation from that person.  After all, in a corporate world these
> are often the norm (or so I’m told).  I regard both ideas as harmful to the
> practice of engineering no matter what the environment.  (And potentially
> abusive, if enforced in a work environment.)
>
>
Yes, I agree it was almost certainly you as "IESG Person". I agree with you
that this is harmful to discussion. I think that this demonstrates an
institutional malaise on the part of the IETF which will require a
considerable amount of work from both the leadership and the community.

> Disagree.  I don’t consider myself stupid, but I’ve done a lot of stupid
> things and I don’t mind saying so.  I also generally find it extremely
> harmful when people take it on themselves to police others’ language.  By
> all means let’s avoid and discourage direct personal insults of all kinds,
> but at the same time let’s not be eager to find fault with others’ choice
> of words.
>
> Sometimes “stupid” really does seem like the best word to describe an
> automaton.  I’d be okay with forbidding it if we found or coined a suitable
> replacement.   But we might be searching a while to develop an adequate
> vocabulary for the spectrum of things we need to express that won’t offend
> anybody.
>
>
I largely agree with you, and have a plethora of excitingly stupid things
I've done as well. I'm also observing other people's opinions. If some
people thought there was such an implication, then some people thought it,
and whether they were right or wrong to think that way, the effect was a
reduction in constructive participation. We should strive to maximize
constructive participation.

> Different people will have different opinions, and I don’t want to add
> fuel to that particular fire, but my analysis of that conversation was
> somewhat different.
>
>
Sorry.  "Shutting down" was an unwarranted exaggeration. But I think it did
indeed reduce constructive participation.

Dave.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 09:00:19 -0400

On 7/16/19 5:55 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 23:04, Keith Moore <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Jul 15, 2019, at 4:51 PM, Dave Cridland <[email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>>     On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 18:50, Keith Moore
>>     <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>>
>>     wrote:
>>
>>     Almost certainly the precise meaning taken differs, but the
>>     essential meaning here is that some IETFers choose to be blunt,
>>     and this drives others away.
>
>     Could you be more precise about what it means to be “blunt”? 
>     Because I’m not sure that I know what you mean. I can think of
>     several possible alternatives:
>
>
> Would "unnecessarily aggressive" be clearer? Perhaps simply 
> "unwelcoming" is enough to cover it.

"unnecessarily aggressive" is still kind of vague, but at least I can 
agree that being unnecessarily aggressive is probably counterproductive.

"unwelcoming" is trickier.   I can certainly understand that a newcomer 
to IETF might not understand the conventions for discussion that are 
appropriate to and supportive of IETF's work.   But it has generally 
seemed to me that newcomers to IETF are treated with a bit more 
deference.   The reason a newcomer feels unwelcome might be more due to 
the newcomer's observation of more experienced persons' behavior toward 
one another, than to the way newcomers are treated.   (I will admit I 
have no supporting data for this.)

>     - let’s say (for the sake of example) that my informed technical
>     opinion is that NATs pose a grave threat to the security and
>     stability of the internet and to the internet’s ability to support
>     diverse applications. [*]  Is it too “blunt” of me to say so? Or
>     am I obligated to pretend, for the sake of “politeness” that NATs
>     are somehow more virtuous than that, because others believe that
>     they are?  In other words, do I have an obligation to be dishonest
>     for the sake of protecting others’ egos or their employers’ products?
>
> [...]
> scare-quotes. Surely if you're not polite, you're being impolite? I 
> don't see how that is a useful strategy for either persuasion or 
> encouraging debate.

I put "politeness" in quotes because it's dangerously ambiguous.   Not 
only can it mean a lot of different things, many of those things are 
actively harmful to IETF's work.   Politeness is not about intent, it's 
about adhering to social conventions. Many social conventions are 
actually harmful - sometimes in the sense of being detrimental to 
technical work, sometimes in the sense of perpetuating harmful 
prejudices, sometimes even in the sense of supporting abuse and 
protecting abusive people.

I doubt that many IETFers would support forms of "politeness" that they 
know have such negative effects, but often people have become so 
conditioned to harmful social conventions that they don't question them 
or even realize that they exist.   Politeness also varies from one 
culture to another, and is often dependent on things like status and 
gender which, if followed, would deter us from behaving as peers.

It's for these reasons that I don't think IETF should define appropriate 
behavior in terms of "politeness".

There are alternatives that are more defensible.  As examples, it's 
always appropriate to have genuine respect for others, and being 
considerate is always an appropriate motivation (though it can backfire).

There's another problem with the notion of "politeness" that I should 
mention - it's the convention that when someone else violates one's 
notion of politeness, one has license to disregard that person, dismiss 
their input out-of-hand, and/or be critical of them personally (either 
publicly or privately).

>
> But look at what you're doing here - isn't the premise of your 
> paragraph here is that I am suggesting, in a debate over how to 
> encourage people to express opinion, that they should not express 
> their opinions?

I suspect you and I are approximately on the same page with this, but I 
don't have the sense that everyone who has been participating in this 
discussion is on the same page.

There's a figure named Cassandra from ancient Greek mythology. She had 
the gift of prophecy but it came with a curse:  The more accurate her 
prophecies, the more fervently they would be disbelieved.   I think the 
ancient Greeks were wry observers of human nature, that they 
incorporated such observations into their myths, and Cassandra's curse 
is a good example.

I've often seen a form of this curse operating in contemporary 
experience.   It looks something like this: The more that a particular 
observation or suggestion or bit of foresight challenges people's 
presumptions, the more they disbelieve it and/or resist it.   Quite 
often, they see that observation or suggestion or foresight as impolite 
or even offensive.   And the truer the observation, and the more clearly 
it is stated, the more fervently people are inclined to resist it.   
(Though I should caution, the fact that people see something as 
offensive doesn't mean it's true.)

I will assert that engineers and scientists and people who make laws and 
policies, especially, need to cultivate the discipline of looking past 
their presumptions, and to make sincere efforts to ask themselves 
whether a challenging observation or suggestion or potential bit of 
foresight might actually be true.

I will further assert that expecting or conditioning people to be 
"polite" is counterproductive to this, and that the likely principal 
effect of expecting people to be "polite" (without being more specific) 
is to encourage mediocrity in IETF, and to discourage participation of 
people with keen powers of observation or unconventional points-of-view.

>     - or am I supposed to treat every technical proposal or decision
>     as if it’s a good one, and refrain from pointing out flaws, or
>     refrain from attempting to express just how harmful a proposal or
>     decision appears to me to be?  If I think that launching the
>     spacecraft in below-freezing weather will significantly risk
>     killing the crew, or that a proposed bridge design is likely to
>     fail in a heavy wind, with potential loss of life, am I expected
>     to say that in veiled terms like “I recommend against that”?
>
>
> You should read up on Crew Resource Management, which discusses this 
> kind of behaviour (often with the same examples, so I suspect you know 
> of it) in intricate detail, but the summary is "no". Pointing out 
> serious issues, assertively, and explaining why you feel these are 
> serious, should be welcomed. Treating every technical proposal or 
> decision as if it's made in good faith, though, is good - and if 
> everyone does that, your warnings of doom should be more heeded, not less.

I hadn't thought of it in the context of this discussion, but CRM is an 
excellent example of adopting different standards for behavior in 
situations for which social conventions were actually harmful.  Thanks 
for mentioning it.

(especially since it has fair amount of research behind it, maybe we 
could actually use CRM as a starting point for a better notion of IETF 
etiquette)

>
> But most of what I'm concerned about isn't shielding the leadership 
> likely to make decisions, but encouraging newcomers to engage - 
> inevitably, as newcomers, the stakes are much much lower, and the need 
> for feedback less urgent, so you can deliver the message needed in a 
> calmer way.
>
>     - or am I supposed to avoid technical discussion of details of a
>     proposal or decision that might embarrass the person making the
>     proposal or decision?
>
> You're supposed to discuss technical details and decisions in a way 
> that avoids the embarrassment of the person making the proposal or 
> decision.

One should not deliberately try to embarrass.   But neither, I submit, 
should IETF participants feel compelled to describe problems with an 
idea or decision vaguely in order to avoid bruising the egos of the 
people who proposed them.    (Hyperbole doesn't help either, of course.)

>     It may be that very experienced and competent engineers are more
>     likely to understand the value in it.  IETF was blessed to attract
>     a lot of extremely competent people in its early days.
>
>
> period of time on these mailing lists are the ones who have grown used 
> to it and consider it normal, or at least can be comfortable with it.

Perhaps they also understand why it's useful or even necessary sometimes.

> younger ones. I think I still am. While I appreciate the way the IETF 
> keeps me feeling young, I'm not entirely convinced this is an overall 
> positive outcome for the IETF.
>
>>     This means avoiding being blunt when we offer our opinions, as
>>     well as trying to tease out the useful opinion from the bluntness
>>     of others.
>
>     I disagree with that generality.  I don’t think it’s welcoming to
>     people to not take them seriously.  One way to not take someone
>     seriously is to humor them when they make bad suggestions and act
>     as if they were good ones. That’s not to say that I think they
>     should have to endure scathing criticism of their ideas (and
>     certainly not of themselves).  But sometimes it is necessary to be
>     clear.
>
>
> delivered aggressively, or with sarcasm, or whatever remains an 
> opinion. We are of course free to disagree with it, but as readers, we 
> should try to understand the actual opinion and disagree with that. I 
> didn't intend to suggest that all opinions are equally correct, but it 
> is often useful to understand others' viewpoints and why they hold 
> them. After all, it allows one to construct more persuasive arguments 
> against them. It is that utility that I meant by "useful".

Certainly agree with that.

>>
>>     To put it another way, we should be conservative in what we send,
>>     and liberal in what we accept from others. Just like that
>>     principle, it should not bar us from noting and rejecting bad
>>     input - but we shouldn't let that be the cause of a fatal error.
>
>     I had started to cite that principle myself but found too many
>     cases for which it produced bad results.  At least we agree that
>     we should be able to reject “bad input”.
>
>
> aggressiveness or whatever and rejecting that, so as to concentrate on 
> the substance. But again that's unclear, since I don't mean to suggest 
> we cannot reject poor arguments, invalid statements, and so on. We not 
> only can, we should.

Agree with that also.

>>     b) Rather than call out that choice of words but answer the
>>     essential points, the organisation chose instead to chastise the
>>     sender publicly and leave the points unanswered - unwittingly
>>     shutting down the discussion.
>
>     Different people will have different opinions, and I don’t want to
>     add fuel to that particular fire, but my analysis of that
>     conversation was somewhat different.
>
>
> Sorry.  "Shutting down" was an unwarranted exaggeration. But I think 
> it did indeed reduce constructive participation.

I certainly agree that constructive participation was thwarted, though 
you and I might disagree as to why.  (or not)

Keith

---

From: "Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 13:57:02 +0000

Hi Keith,

Personally, I think that the best feedback is constructive, objective and preferably delivered in a kind way whenever possible.

I also don’t see that striving for feedback to be provided in this way conflicts with the successful functioning of IETF (either historically, or today).

Of course, this is just one opinion.

Kind regards,
Rob

From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Keith Moore
Sent: 16 July 2019 14:00
To: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked] Discussion <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Tolerance

On 7/16/19 5:55 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 23:04, Keith Moore <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:

On Jul 15, 2019, at 4:51 PM, Dave Cridland <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 18:50, Keith Moore <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:

Would "unnecessarily aggressive" be clearer? Perhaps simply "unwelcoming" is enough to cover it.

"unnecessarily aggressive" is still kind of vague, but at least I can agree that being unnecessarily aggressive is probably counterproductive.

"unwelcoming" is trickier.   I can certainly understand that a newcomer to IETF might not understand the conventions for discussion that are appropriate to and supportive of IETF's work.   But it has generally seemed to me that newcomers to IETF are treated with a bit more deference.   The reason a newcomer feels unwelcome might be more due to the newcomer's observation of more experienced persons' behavior toward one another, than to the way newcomers are treated.   (I will admit I have no supporting data for this.)

[...]

Politeness surely isn't a bad thing that needs careful protection with scare-quotes. Surely if you're not polite, you're being impolite? I don't see how that is a useful strategy for either persuasion or encouraging debate.

I put "politeness" in quotes because it's dangerously ambiguous.   Not only can it mean a lot of different things, many of those things are actively harmful to IETF's work.   Politeness is not about intent, it's about adhering to social conventions.   Many social conventions are actually harmful - sometimes in the sense of being detrimental to technical work, sometimes in the sense of perpetuating harmful prejudices, sometimes even in the sense of supporting abuse and protecting abusive people.

I doubt that many IETFers would support forms of "politeness" that they know have such negative effects, but often people have become so conditioned to harmful social conventions that they don't question them or even realize that they exist.   Politeness also varies from one culture to another, and is often dependent on things like status and gender which, if followed, would deter us from behaving as peers.

It's for these reasons that I don't think IETF should define appropriate behavior in terms of "politeness".

There are alternatives that are more defensible.  As examples, it's always appropriate to have genuine respect for others, and being considerate is always an appropriate motivation (though it can backfire).

There's another problem with the notion of "politeness" that I should mention - it's the convention that when someone else violates one's notion of politeness, one has license to disregard that person, dismiss their input out-of-hand, and/or be critical of them personally (either publicly or privately).

But look at what you're doing here - isn't the premise of your paragraph here is that I am suggesting, in a debate over how to encourage people to express opinion, that they should not express their opinions?

I suspect you and I are approximately on the same page with this, but I don't have the sense that everyone who has been participating in this discussion is on the same page.

There's a figure named Cassandra from ancient Greek mythology.   She had the gift of prophecy but it came with a curse:  The more accurate her prophecies, the more fervently they would be disbelieved.   I think the ancient Greeks were wry observers of human nature, that they incorporated such observations into their myths, and Cassandra's curse is a good example.

I've often seen a form of this curse operating in contemporary experience.   It looks something like this: The more that a particular observation or suggestion or bit of foresight challenges people's presumptions, the more they disbelieve it and/or resist it.   Quite often, they see that observation or suggestion or foresight as impolite or even offensive.   And the truer the observation, and the more clearly it is stated, the more fervently people are inclined to resist it.   (Though I should caution, the fact that people see something as offensive doesn't mean it's true.)

I will assert that engineers and scientists and people who make laws and policies, especially, need to cultivate the discipline of looking past their presumptions, and to make sincere efforts to ask themselves whether a challenging observation or suggestion or potential bit of foresight might actually be true.

I will further assert that expecting or conditioning people to be "polite" is counterproductive to this, and that the likely principal effect of expecting people to be "polite" (without being more specific) is to encourage mediocrity in IETF, and to discourage participation of people with keen powers of observation or unconventional points-of-view.

You should read up on Crew Resource Management, which discusses this kind of behaviour (often with the same examples, so I suspect you know of it) in intricate detail, but the summary is "no". Pointing out serious issues, assertively, and explaining why you feel these are serious, should be welcomed. Treating every technical proposal or decision as if it's made in good faith, though, is good - and if everyone does that, your warnings of doom should be more heeded, not less.

I hadn't thought of it in the context of this discussion, but CRM is an excellent example of adopting different standards for behavior in situations for which social conventions were actually harmful.  Thanks for mentioning it.

(especially since it has fair amount of research behind it, maybe we could actually use CRM as a starting point for a better notion of IETF etiquette)

But most of what I'm concerned about isn't shielding the leadership likely to make decisions, but encouraging newcomers to engage - inevitably, as newcomers, the stakes are much much lower, and the need for feedback less urgent, so you can deliver the message needed in a calmer way.

You're supposed to discuss technical details and decisions in a way that avoids the embarrassment of the person making the proposal or decision.

One should not deliberately try to embarrass.   But neither, I submit, should IETF participants feel compelled to describe problems with an idea or decision vaguely in order to avoid bruising the egos of the people who proposed them.    (Hyperbole doesn't help either, of course.)

I think it's more likely that most people who have spent a significant period of time on these mailing lists are the ones who have grown used to it and consider it normal, or at least can be comfortable with it.

When I joined my first IETF list nearly 25 years ago, I was one of the younger ones. I think I still am. While I appreciate the way the IETF keeps me feeling young, I'm not entirely convinced this is an overall positive outcome for the IETF.
This means avoiding being blunt when we offer our opinions, as well as trying to tease out the useful opinion from the bluntness of others.

Yes, you're right. The point I was trying to make was that an opinion delivered aggressively, or with sarcasm, or whatever remains an opinion. We are of course free to disagree with it, but as readers, we should try to understand the actual opinion and disagree with that. I didn't intend to suggest that all opinions are equally correct, but it is often useful to understand others' viewpoints and why they hold them. After all, it allows one to construct more persuasive arguments against them. It is that utility that I meant by "useful".

I actually intended the "bad input" to mean stripping out the aggressiveness or whatever and rejecting that, so as to concentrate on the substance. But again that's unclear, since I don't mean to suggest we cannot reject poor arguments, invalid statements, and so on. We not only can, we should.

Agree with that also.

Sorry.  "Shutting down" was an unwarranted exaggeration. But I think it did indeed reduce constructive participation.

I certainly agree that constructive participation was thwarted, though you and I might disagree as to why.  (or not)

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:14:16 -0400

On 7/16/19 9:57 AM, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:

> Personally, I think that the best feedback is constructive, objective 
> and preferably delivered in a kind way whenever possible.
>
Stated in those terms, I probably agree with you.

Sometimes it's difficult to be constructive, as when someone proposes an 
idea that seems really harmful but one cannot readily come up with a 
better alternative.   Sometimes there are no good solutions to a 
problem; sometimes any change is worse than the status quo.

Sometimes it's especially difficult to be objective, because we all 
naturally have different perspectives, different experiences, and access 
to different information.   Indeed one of IETF's strengths should be 
that it can incorporate a broad spectrum of non-objective perspectives.

And there can be differing opinions as to what is "kind". Someone who 
earnestly seeks truth or a good solution to a problem, can be happy to 
learn that he was wrong or that a better solution is available.  It can 
be unkind to withhold or disguise that information.

> I also don’t see that striving for feedback to be provided in this way 
> conflicts with the successful functioning of IETF (either 
> historically, or today).
>
Nor I, within reason.    Though I can identify exceptions, I don't 
especially object to what you've stated.

Keith

---

From: Jacob Hoffman-Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:39:13 -0700

> mean different things to different people.
Several months ago a draft was posted to a WG I don't normally 
contribute to. I had relevant deployment experience, and also wanted to 
ask questions to better understand the topic. However, the first post 
was one WG regular telling the author "You are insane to propose 
<technical thing>."

I have better things to do with my time than potentially being called 
insane by strangers, so I didn't join, didn't post, and instead has a 
useful offline conversation with some trusted coworkers. That's a 
concrete example of how uncollegial behavior discourages participation.

A more useful post would have said "I'm against <technical thing>. It 
would break X because Y, and would also break Z."

> personal attack of sorts, too.

As a moderator this is a tough needle to thread. On the one hand, giving 
feedback privately is kinder to the recipient and the feedback is more 
likely to be considered rather than defensively rejected. On the other 
hand, what we say publicly creates norms. Sometimes it's important for a 
community to see people say publicly "we don't do that here." Both 
approaches have their place in a healthy community, based on the situation.

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 14:23:20 -0600

The IETF is full of people like myself that are more computer knowledgeable than social knowledgeable.

That means we are not trained politicians or diplomats. if someone calls me insane or whatever, I skip it, and go to the facts of the debate or issue or email.

Some get so involved in their proposal, perhaps implementing, perhaps they need the process over, or for other reasons, that they react before they think about how to say things in pretty ways.

Sometimes proposals do not get reviewed until the WG last call, or maybe the IETF last call. Then someone posts something they think is a reasonable concern. Perhaps because they misunderstood something. Perhaps because they found a real issue. And the replies can feel personal and offensive.

That is the IETF life. If a reply is snotty, personal, or just over reactionary, ignore the first one or few in the email. If it continues send a private email expressing your feeling about their methods of communication. Most of the time I have found they just wanted to express emotional frustration or it was a misunderstanding.

Overwhelmingly, I have found the IETF mailing list and people to be supportive people that I am honored to have communicated with. And definitely and especially after a contentious minor bump in the communications.

And if that does not work for you, there are no IETF employees hired to hold anyone's hand during the process. So participate or not.

-- 

Doug Royer - (http://DougRoyer.US)
[email-masked]
714-989-6135

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:57:30 +1200

Hi Jacob,

On 17-Jul-19 07:39, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews wrote:
...
>  However, the first post 

Clearly that was out of order and IMHO the WG chairs should have said so.
But (having started professional life among physicists) I don't think
it can be called unusual. As a matter of curiosity, I just ran a search
on my personal email archives and found 174 occurences of the word "insane"
going back to 1995.

The first one of all reads:

> It could be that the
> 4 bits may be better devoted to making the flow id be a full
> 32 bits.
> 
>     I think Brian's words of
>     SHOULD and MAY are important and a good idea too.
> 
> Frankly, this is positively insane.   Either IPv6 is a variation
> of IPv4, and shares the same ethernet type, with demux early
> in the IP processing, or its new, and is demuxed at the ethernet
> (and other) layers.   Having it both ways is just idiocy.

So X is telling Y that Brian's idea is insane and idiotic, as far as
I can see. But IPv6 ended up with both its own Ethertype and an IP version
number field.

The point is that this wasn't offensive, because it was directed at
the technical proposal, not at the proposer. I think that's what people
should bear in mind.

     Brian

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:20:56 -0400

My personal rule of thumb is that life in tech means putting up with a bit
of hyperbole every now and then. :-) But that's really not unique to tech -
just look at question time in Parliament!

When someone says or writes something to me like "your proposal is idiotic
because ... " or "you're an idiot to propose that because ... ", I just
ignore the first part of the sentence and try to parse out the actual
technical point being made.

Cheers,
Andy

On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 4:58 PM Brian E Carpenter <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> ....

---

From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:36:01 -0400

> technical point being made.

Reacting to this "I just ignore..." part because it's come up twice in this
thread...

While I'm glad that the folks saying this are able to ignore this sort of
language, that's not really the question.  The question someone should be
*expected* to have that level of thick skin in order to participate.  As
Jacob's example shows, we lose important contributions from important
contributors when we set the bar that high.

--Richard

>> .....

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 18:33:06 -0400

> On Jul 16, 2019, at 5:36 PM, Richard Barnes <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> While I'm glad that the folks saying this are able to ignore this sort of language, that's not really the question.  The question someone should be *expected* to have that level of thick skin in order to participate. 

I find myself wondering what if...

- we had a rule that explicitly permitted criticism of ideas but forbade criticism of people [*] (with penalties for repeated infractions)
- every discussion forum in ietf had a person tasked with calling out those who cross the above line

?

I’d like to think this would result in fewer personal attacks, more thoughtful criticism, and a less hostile impression of ietf to newcomers - without having a chilling effect on technical discussion.  But I’m not sure things would work out that way.

Keith

[*] no fair saying things like “this proposal is the product of a deranged mind” even though technically that’s a criticism of the proposal :)

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:39:39 -0600

On 7/16/19 3:36 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:

> While I'm glad that the folks saying this are able to ignore this sort of language, that's not really the question.  The question someone should be *expected* to have that level of thick skin in order to participate.  As Jacob's example shows, we lose important contributions from important contributors when we set the bar that high.

No one is required or expected to participate in the IETF.

Given that, then the next decision is: Can you work with less than perfect people? I can. Others can. If a person can not, then the IETF is not the place to post, because it is full of less than perfect people.

When a person persists on name calling, give the process time to work. The people that take care of that are also volunteers that have work, life, and other important priorities in their life.

I have noticed in my life, when a bully uses that method to get their way, and some quit, then the bully gets their way.

You can not achieve your goal when you quit. How important are your goals to you?

--

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 15:09:07 -0800

> You can not achieve your goal when you quit. How important are your

It seems to me that driving away people with energy and
ideas because they're not willing to deal with the tone of
discussions here (and let's be clear: there are no longer
very many organizations in which abusive language or behavior
is tolerated) and leave, either to focus on implementation
or to take their work to another body, the IETF is the loser,
not the person who left.  I worry about several factors
degrading the quality of our output and this is certainly one
of them.

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Jul 2019 19:11:11 -0400

>Given that, then the next decision is: Can you work with less than perfect people? I can. Others can. If a person can not, then the IETF is not the place to post, because it is full of less than per…

"I put up with it and so can you" is not a great strategy for the long
term health of the IETF.  There is quite a wide gap between people
being perfect and people acting the way some IETFers do.  The
ombudsbeings ocasionally have a chat with me and while I can't say I
enjoy it, we've always concluded amicably and it hasn't affected my
ability to say that bad ideas are bad ideas.

It may be instructive to look at M3AAWG which also has three meetings
a year, e-mail discussions between meetings, and people much like the
IETF, indeed a fair number of the same people.  A few years ago after
some bad experiences at the conference social events, they made a
conscious decision that they wanted an environment where nobody was
threatened and people worked together respectfully.  They put together
a very reasonable code of conduct, and enforced it.  A few people
never got the hint and were sent home (no great loss) but the effect
is that people work at least as well together, women don't have to
worry that they'll be hit on if they join a conversation in the bar,
and the overall feel is the same but perhaps a little more relaxed.
We're also well positioned to welcome and get work from people who are
not old white guys.  Perhaps coincidentally, there are a lot more
women attending and doing work than at the IETF.

What does M3AAWG know that we don't?

The conduct policy is here:  https://www.m3aawg.org/conduct-policy

R's,
John

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 19:35:40 -0400

> degrading the quality of our output and this is certainly one

I would really like to make a clear distinction between "tone" and 
"abusive language or behavior" because they're not the same thing at 
all.   IMO, "tone policing" is nearly always destructive, and sometimes 
itself a form of abuse (sometimes also inappropriate manipulation of a 
political outcome).

Having said that, I certainly agree that when we deter useful 
contributions from people by whatever means, we do ourselves a 
disservice.   That goes for tone policing as much as anything else.

I wonder how many useful contributors of the past we've scared away by 
trying to curtail their earnest efforts to contribute discussion of 
frustrating technical problems?

Keith

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 23:43:10 +0000

Strong +1 to what Melinda wrote.

---

From: Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 16:49:09 -0700

> On Jul 16, 2019, at 4:09 PM, Melinda Shore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> not the person who left.

While true, this begs the question of whether the decline in interest in working with the IETF is due to our “tone of discussions”.  One should also consider the possibility that some people are being driven away by the IETF’s recent increased focus on ‘proper behavior’ - or for other reasons entirely.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 15:54:47 -0800

On 7/16/19 3:49 PM, Ross Finlayson wrote:
> While true, this begs the question of whether the decline in interest
> in working with the IETF is due to our “tone of discussions”.  One
> should also consider the possibility that some people are being
> driven away by the IETF’s recent increased focus on ‘proper behavior’
> - or for other reasons entirely.

I dunno.  On the one hand, I've talked with several smart people
with good insights and superior technical chops who've come to one
meeting and said they won't be back because of the "quality" of
the community.  My own sense is that if people feel overly constrained
by being expected to treat other participants with respect and/or
courtesy, well, "Bye, Felicia."

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]

---

From: Jacob Hoffman-Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:09:48 -0700

> I can see. But IPv6 ended up with both its own Ethertype and an IP version
It sounds like the combative style of this 1996 poster was not effective 
in persuading the working group. It may even have been less persuasive 
than a more direct post explaining the disadvantages, for instance:

 > Either IPv6 is a variation
 > (and other) layers. If we try to have it both ways, we will
 > waste bits on the wire and introduce processing complexity for
 > implementators.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:10:41 +1200

Hi John,

On 17-Jul-19 11:11, John Levine wrote:
...
> The conduct policy is here:  https://www.m3aawg.org/conduct-policy

There's little there that (in a less organized form) doesn't apply to the IETF (via the mailing list exclusion mechanisms, the anti-harassment policy, the ombudsteam, etc.)

Yes, we could post a unified code of conduct and that would be a good thing. I forget why there was no follow-up to https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-odell-code-of-conduct

But the real answer to your question is here IMHO:

https://www.m3aawg.org/join

It's a formal membership organization, with membership fees, and the threat of expulsion is real and meaningful. That's an option that the IETF doesn't really have.

Regards
    Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 20:52:28 -0400

> courtesy, well, "Bye, Felicia."

As far as I can tell, the real questions are "who gets to determine 
whether someone's behavior is disrespectful or discourteous, and are the 
standards fairly objective or mostly subjective?"

Keith

---

From: Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:43:29 +0100

> frustrating technical problems?

I know of many people in the operational community who either don't 
contribute or who no longer contribute to IETF discussions because of 
perceived hostility.

Nick

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 05:27:48 -0400

On 7/17/19 3:43 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote:

>> I wonder how many useful contributors of the past we've scared away 
>> by trying to curtail their earnest efforts to contribute discussion 
>> of frustrating technical problems?
>

I don't doubt this at all, but there's more than one kind of 
hostility.     Personal insults are one kind of hostility. Attacks on a 
speaker's "tone" are often, I submit, another kind of hostility.   
Especially over email, the same words can be read in many different ways 
by different readers.   Even in person or with audio, frustration can be 
confused with anger - and these discussions are inevitably frustrating 
sometimes.

Shutting down speakers because of their "tone" has the effect of 
explicitly permitting attacks on a speaker based on nothing more than a 
listener's (or listeners') prejudice against the speaker. I've seen it 
happen many times, and IMO it would be a grave mistake to legitimize the 
practice.

Even if the listener's hostility is not toward the speaker him- or 
herself, but only to the ideas that the speaker is proposing, arguing 
against them on the basis of their "tone" rather than their content is 
an extremely unhelpful distraction.  By all means suggest edits to 
improve the presentation of the ideas, but try to evaluate the actual 
ideas.

A speaker with an unusual point of view may see a situation in sharp 
relief as compared to others' view of that situation.   If the speaker 
describes that situation in strong terms, he or she is merely reporting 
the situation as he or she sees it.   The speaker's point of view is not 
necessarily wrong, nor is the speaker's motivation.   IETF should not be 
hostile to varied points-of-view, though of course decisions still have 
to earn rough consensus.

Keith

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 11:55:31 +0200

On Jul 17, 2019, at 09:43, Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> I know of many people in the operational community who either don't contribute or who no longer contribute to IETF discussions because of perceived hostility.

Is that because of perceived hostility in tone or maybe because of perceived hostility towards their ideas (i.e., IETF is going to ignore their points anyway)?

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:40:08 -0400

FWIW, the thing that makes it hardest to participate in the IETF are the long threads that never go anywhere. They serve as a DoS attack on the entire IETF. I realize hit may sound hypocritical for me to say this, since i offend in this way from time to time.  Hostility is a huge problem and I don’t mean to minimize it, but I think this is arguably worse. 

Please think of your audience.  If you are adding to the conversation, great.  If you are just communicating because you feel unsatisfied but have nothing really new to add, there is almost certainly some better (less expensive) way to satisfy that need. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 17, 2019, at 5:55 AM, Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 08:55:24 -0400

> FWIW, the thing that makes it hardest to participate in the IETF are the long threads that never go anywhere. They serve as a DoS attack on the entire IETF. I realize hit may sound hypocritical for…

I think I understand the problem and agree that long conversations are 
tiring and discourage participation.   But how does one know when 
posting that the thread will never go anywhere?   Is it wrong for people 
to continue to seek resolution just because others don't care or have 
given up?

My rule of thumb is when I find myself saying something for the third 
time, with nothing new to add, consider that maybe twice was enough.   
But sometimes people think that a speaker is looping when really he or 
she has been refining his or her argument, maybe even trying to suggest 
a compromise that accommodates others' viewpoints or concerns also.

I've often wondered if better tools would help.   Let everybody with an 
opinion post his or her position, a summary and a detailed argument if 
the speaker wishes.  Show the different positions side-by-side on a web 
page.   Permit readers to comment, but also permit speakers to refine 
their positions and make it visually obvious when they've done so.   
Maybe show some sort of heat map of the spectrum of opinions (but not 
too soon).

I'm intrigued by the possibility, but there also appear to be several 
ways that this approach would actually hinder discussion rather than 
facilitate it.   One example: whoever is able to frame the topic of a 
discussion can often more-or-less dictate the outcome, and forcing 
categories onto discussions can exacerbate the problem.

> Please think of your audience.  If you are adding to the conversation, great..  If you are just communicating because you feel unsatisfied but have nothing really new to add, there is almost certainly some better (less expensive) way to satisfy that need.

I also don't think there's anything wrong with a speaker agreeing with 
one idea or another, including agreeing from a different perspective, 
even though in some sense the speaker is not adding anything new.   To 
me that seems far better than having only two or three people doing all 
the talking.

Keith

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 06:03:01 -0700

Hi Jacob, Keith, Brian,
At 12:39 PM 16-07-2019, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews wrote:
>contribute to. I had relevant deployment experience, and also wanted 
>to ask questions to better understand the topic. However, the first 
>post was one WG regular telling the author "You are insane to 
>propose <technical thing>."

>on my personal email archives and found 174 occurences of the word "insane"

I took a quick look at some Working Group mailing lists.  On one of 
them, there was an email between an IETF participant from an 
English-speaking country and another IETF participant from a 
non-English-speaking country.  In that email there is a comment 
similar to what is described in the first extract which is quoted above.

What happened in the past (re. Brian's comment) may be useful to 
understand the traditions of the IETF.  The email which I mentioned 
was sent last year and the Working Group Chairs were silent about 
what was said in it.

The following sentence is from a RFC: "The IETF strives, through 
these guidelines for conduct, to create and maintain an environment 
in which every person is treated with dignity, decency, and 
respect".  Should the sentence be removed from the RFC?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 09:12:16 -0400

On 7/17/19 9:03 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:

> The following sentence is from a RFC: "The IETF strives, through these 
> guidelines for conduct, to create and maintain an environment in which 
> every person is treated with dignity, decency, and respect".  Should 
> the sentence be removed from the RFC?

IMO, the RFC text should reflect the consensus of the community about 
what it strives to do, even if in reality it falls short of that ideal.

(If we didn't care at all, we wouldn't be having this conversation about 
how to strike a balance between competing concerns - all of which are 
about suppression of input.)

Keith

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 06:48:07 -0700

On Jul 17, 2019, at 5:55 AM, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I think I understand the problem and agree that long conversations are tiring and discourage participation.   But how does one know when posting that the thread will never go anywhere?   Is it wrong for people to continue to seek resolution just because others don't care or have given up?

It’s wrong to seek resolution at all unless it is useful.  I mentioned this particular thread because you’ve been going back and forth with various people for 42 messages just under just this subject line, which is one of several that sprung from the original thread.  You are never going to get resolution on this, because there isn’t consensus on it: some people believe one thing, and some people believe another.   Continuing to discuss it is not adding value, and hasn’t been for quite some time.

The reason I brought up the book Thanks For the Feedback and the book The Art of Possibility a couple of weeks (!) ago, during the early part of this discussion, is that I think we at the IETF really don’t have any good heuristics for how to give and receive feedback, and both books are not only highly topical but also very useful in terms of providing better heuristics.

As far as I can tell, O(nobody) actually bought or read either book.   And here we are ineffectually going around and around and around again in this discussion, with you still feeling like you haven’t gotten resolution and yet still imagining that you can.   I say this not as a personal criticism, but simply to point out that your heuristic isn’t working.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 09:58:32 -0400

On 7/17/19 9:48 AM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> On Jul 17, 2019, at 5:55 AM, Keith Moore <[email-masked] 
>> I think I understand the problem and agree that long conversations 
>> are tiring and discourage participation.   But how does one know when 
>> posting that the thread will never go anywhere?   Is it wrong for 
>> people to continue to seek resolution just because others don't care 
>> or have given up?
>
> It’s wrong to seek resolution at all unless it is useful.  I mentioned 
> this particular thread because you’ve been going back and forth with 
> various people for 42 messages just under just this subject line, 
> which is one of several that sprung from the original thread.  You are 
> never going to get resolution on this, because there isn’t consensus 
> on it: some people believe one thing, and some people believe another. 
> Continuing to discuss it is not adding value, and hasn’t been for 
> quite some time.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I do think that most people can learn to 
accommodate multiple points-of-view into their own thinking.  I've seen 
it happen on many occasions.  (I wish it were more frequently taught in 
schools.)

However I was just thinking this morning (before receiving your message) 
that there probably wasn't much, if anything, that I haven't said 
already on the topic.

I don't automatically accept others' evaluation about what is "useful" 
or "adding value".   I know there is potential value there, even if it's 
a gamble as to whether it will be realized. Other people may yet be 
surprised.  And if people did accept others' (premature) evaluations, 
anyone could easily (deliberately or not) conduct a DoS attack merely by 
being stubborn for a short time.

But I'll check out the books you recommended.

Keith

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 07:29:53 -0700 (PDT)

> Is that because of perceived hostility in tone or maybe because of perceived
> hostility towards their ideas (i.e., IETF is going to ignore their points
> anyway)?

Speaking from my perspective as an apps area person - other areas may be
different - it used to be the latter, now it's the former.

There was a fairly long period where the IETF was openly hostile to work on new
application protocols. And by "hostile" I mean direct accusations of ill intent
both in email and at F2F meetings. (In one especially egregious case I ended up
with the proponent of a particular piece of work literally on my doorstep
because of the treatment they received.)

The result is quite a lot of work was done elsewhere. And I have no doubt that
memories of this behavior linger in some circles, to the IETF's detriment.

I haven't seen this happen recently - at least not in email or in the streamed
sessions I've watched. (I no longer attend F2F meetings, so maybe it's still
happening there, just behind the scenes.) People seem more generally receptive
to new ideas these days, and I've seen numerous instances where people have
gone out of their way to be encouraging to work that is interesting but has
serious flaws that need to be addressed before it can possibly be viable.

But there absolutely has been a rise in tone policing. And since it adds cost
to communications - both having to perform additional scrutiny of what is said
as well as the risk of having something, no matter how well vetted, be taken
the wrong way - in my case at least has led to my no longer bothering to
provide technical commentary on minor points.

And while I have no proof, nor any way to get any proof, I rather suspect I'm
not alone in this.

				Ned

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Jul 2019 11:14:19 -0400

>It's a formal membership organization, with membership fees, and the threat of expulsion is real and meaningful. That's an option that the IETF doesn't really have.

When we send people home, which doesn't happen very often, we send the
person, not the company.  The company is welcome to send other people
and they always have.

R's,
John

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2019 14:01:23 +1200

> Is that because of perceived hostility in tone or maybe because of perceived hostility towards their ideas (i.e., IETF is going to ignore their points anyway)?

I'm sure there's both, but although both are important, I think the second one is much more profoundly worrying. When people actually trying to run networks based on IETF specifications tell us that a proposed specification will cause significant operational issues, we are very foolish (dare I say stupid?) if we don't listen. However, experience shows that this doesn't come cheap. The operations people, who are typically under a great deal of pressure in their day jobs, don't want to spend half their working hours explaining the real world to people that they think are living in a theoretical world. The designers have to be willing to listen, and to consider that their theory may be wrong or impractical. Worse, they may have to abandon their brilliant idea and tell their bosses that they were wrong.

This isn't imaginary. I've been there, done that, more than once. And it's a good thing. I'm very grateful to ops people who've improved, or shot down, some of my past work. But we need more of this, not less, and it takes a lot of people's time.

Being polite and tolerant with each other is only part of it. The other part is listening to what's being said.

Regards
    Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2019 05:58:51 -0400

On 7/17/19 10:01 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> I'm sure there's both, but although both are important, I think the second one is much more profoundly worrying.
[Side note]  In practice, I suspect it's difficult to reliably tell the 
difference.   Sometimes people blame a speaker for his/her "tone" when 
in fact what that speaker is doing is attempting to make a clear (if 
unsettling) technical statement.

> When people actually trying to run networks based on IETF specifications tell us that a proposed specification will cause significant operational issues, we are very foolish (dare I say stupid?) if we don't listen. However, experience shows that this doesn't come cheap. The operations people, who are typically under a great deal of pressure in their day jobs, don't want to spend half their working hours explaining the real world to people that they think are living in a theoretical world. The designers have to be willing to listen, and to consider that their theory may be wrong or impractical. Worse, they may have to abandon their brilliant idea and tell their bosses that they were wrong.
>
> Being polite and tolerant with each other is only part of it.*/The other part is listening to what's being said./*

Entirely agree.    (and with emphasis added)

I would further assert that the duty to listen  - actively, and with an 
open mind - is at least as important as the speaker's duty to speak 
clearly and effectively.

Keith

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2019 12:26:24 -0400

> degrading the quality of our output and this is certainly one

It is probably worthwhile recalling that the Web was originally
standardized in IETF. Most of it has left IETF because of the culture
issue. Cross area review sounds like a great idea until you end up with
people insisting on adding prefixes to distinguish URNs from URLs in the
mistaken belief that they are disjoint categories and refusing to accept
they are not.

On the NAT issue, Keith and others were not so nuanced or for that matter
polite back in the days when we ended up destroying the utility of IPSEC on
account of their opinion.

I get the fact that some people are desperate to deploy IPv6 and DNSSEC.
Really, I do. No, I really, really do get that people imagine that tying
some piece of functionality to one or the other is going to help
deployment. That does not mean that they are right or that they should get
their way even if they were.

The reason I deployed NAT in 1997 was simple, my broadband provider charged
$10/mo for every extra IPv4 address. I saw all the nattering about NATs as
frankly an abuse of process to steal money from me and every other Internet
user. It was obvious that 99.9% of users would do exactly the same.

I do not have a nuanced opinion on NAT. I believe it is here to stay so
whether or not it is a good thing is irrelevant. But NAT is in fact useful
even in a pure IPv6 network. I don't want to argue that NAT should be
tolerated, it should be celebrated. Here is why.

The user problem we have to solve here is that we don't have enough IPv4
addresses for every user in the world to have a unique one. We have already
got more users than there are addresses.

We do however have enough IPv6 addresses to give one to every user and the
stock of IPv4 addresses is sufficient to support the number of Internet
hosts that provide services and this should be sufficient till 2050 or so
if not longer.

The Internet is a network of networks. The only technical mandate of the
original Internet was that Internet Protocol be the only protocol used
between the networks joined to the Internet. That protocol used to be IPv4
and it is becoming IPv6.

The idea of IP protocol was not part of the original architecture, it came
later and for the obvious reason that there is no particular advantage to
switching network protocols at the network/internetwork boundary. But it
certainly doesn't follow from the fact that we run IP protocol in the
network and across the inter-network that the IP addresses should be
constant end to end.

If I have a device on my network that I wish to be an internet connected
device that can talk to any other internet device, then it obviously needs
IPv6 because it needs to be able to address any device on the Internet and
there are more than 2^32 devices already. But most devices only need to
connect to a service. My Internet connected blender (talk on Thursday) does
not need to talk to every other blender on the planet. It only needs to
talk to one service.

So rather than trying to insist on phasing out IPv4, we would do much
better to embrace NAT and actively promote, enthusiastically and
unreservedly, a scheme in which they are the agent enabling change that
meets the real near term need which is that a user who is on an IPv6 only
or an IPv6 with a limited share of an IPv4 gets the exact same Internet
service and benefits as a user with a full IPv4.

* Each residence gets an IPv6/104 (or better)
* Every device is assigned an address in 10.x.x.x
* Devices speak IPv4 to each other inside the network.
* Dual stack devices can contact any Internet server without restriction.
* Single stack IPv4 devices can only contact devices inside the network
unless they have help.
* Devise mechanisms that reduce the amount of state that an IPv4 device
needs to contact Internet devices to the bare minimum and allow the NAT to
transport these on IPv6 rather than IPv4 to limit the need for IPv4
addressing at the residence.

My proposal may not look pretty to some but it is essentially the strategy
the industry is adopting regardless of IETF opinion. So why didn't it
happen this way?

Well one reason was that people like me who made this proposal were
bullied. And when we responded to the bullying we were treated the same way
that women often complain of being treated when they make proposals. We
were accused of not being respectful and so on. And then when people took
the ideas we proposed and adopted them, nobody came back and said 'well you
were right'.

Right behind me is a 36" plotter that would cost me $3500 to replace. It
only works on an IPv4 interface. There is absolutely no circumstance in
which I am upgrading that machine just for the sake of IPv6. Now rather
than trying to persuade me to act in a way no ordinary Internet user is
ever going to act, please take my refusal to do so as an example of the
general case.

One of the things I find bizarre about IETF discourse is that there are
people who insist that we have to maintain backwards compatibility with the
PDP/11 era and there are people who advocate a fork lift upgrade of the
entire Internet to support IPv6, and they are the SAME PEOPLE.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 02:05:37 +1200

On 20-Jul-19 04:26, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
...

> * Single stack IPv4 devices can only contact devices inside the network unless they have help.
> * Devise mechanisms that reduce the amount of state that an IPv4 device needs to contact Internet devices to the bare minimum and allow the NAT to transport these on IPv6 rather than IPv4 to limit the need for IPv4 addressing at the residence.
> 
> My proposal may not look pretty to some but it is essentially the strategy the industry is adopting regardless of IETF opinion. So why didn't it happen this way?

Not exactly, but if you look at the *current* state of IETF documents you get:

* Each residence gets an IPv6/56 (or better), so that addressing and routing
within the home are possible
* Every device is assigned an address in 10.x.x.x or another RFC1918 prefix
* Devices speak IPv4 or IPv6 to each other inside the network.
* Dual stack devices can contact any Internet server without restriction.
* Single stack IPv4 devices can only contact devices inside the network unless they have help.
* Provide WAN IPv4 as a service over IPv6 (which integrates NAT44, of course)

That's pretty much where we are today, apart from the ISPs who decided years ago to avoid the last bullet with:

* Provide WAN IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel (which integrates NAT44, of course)

NAT44 works surprisingly well, compared to how badly it worked in the PDP-11 era.

    Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 10:44:39 -0400

On 7/19/19 12:26 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 7:09 PM Melinda Shore <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
> issue. Cross area review sounds like a great idea until you end up 
> with people insisting on adding prefixes to distinguish URNs from URLs 
> in the mistaken belief that they are disjoint categories and refusing 
> to accept they are not.

Wow.  That's perhaps the biggest distortion I've ever seen in IETF.

URNs were, by design, disjoint from URLs because URLs did not have the 
properties desired.  You may disagree with the design decision, as did 
at least a few others.  And, sadly, some of those people have managed to 
destroy most of the utility of URNs.   But that feature of URLs was an 
explicit design decision, and efforts by people to sabotage them do 
nothing to change that.

Keith

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 10:55:45 -0400

Fix the damn subject line and apologize if you want to continue this
conversation.

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 10:45 AM Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> properties desired.  You may disagree with the design decision, as did at
> least a few others.  And, sadly, some of those people have managed to
> explicit design decision, and efforts by people to sabotage them do nothing
> to change that.
>
> Keith
>
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 11:01:32 -0400

It's probably better if we don't continue the conversation.   I don't 
really see the point in rehashing things that are 25 years old, and are 
now water under the bridge.   But neither did I think your statement 
should stand without being refuted.

You may now have the last word if you wish.

Keith

---

From: Jared Mauch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 11:02:06 -0400

Clipping (with quotes/context) for emphasis.

> On Jul 20, 2019, at 10:55 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Fix the damn subject line and apologize if you want to continue this conversation.
> 
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 10:45 AM Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 7:09 PM Melinda Shore <[email-masked]> wrote:

I’m similarly concerned that the community, volunteers and companies are the losers here if the dialogue continues in such a rapid-fire fashion.  I’ve been wrong many times before, will be wrong again in the future and overruled by others, including by the real boss of my house (I only pretend to be in charge :-) ).

These conversations will be archived for eternity on the internet, I’m not sure this reflects the best that we have to offer the IETF and internet standards community as a whole.  Our comments will be preserved for generations to come, long after the pathways of the internet may have changed.  Our permanent records didn’t end in school.

- Jared

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 12:59:13 -0400

I am making a formal complaint of bullying here. I did not accuse anyone of
lying. I gave an opportunity to retract the libel, Mr Moore has refused.

It was precisely this attitude and the fact that Mr Moore was an AD at the
time that led many people working on the Web to conclude that IETF was not
going to be a viable venue.

It is one thing for there to be 'robust discussion', quite another when an
AD is expressing their opinion in this manner. Because then the process
really isn't a consensus process any more.

I spent a great deal of time working on my theory of URIs and read close to
50 books on Semiotics and related work. I never saw any evidence that the
fixed opinions others had on the subject were the result of similar
research.

Whether the nature of the IESG's behavior led the Web people to leave or
not is a matter of opinion, that URNs and URLs do not constitute disjoint
semantic sets is not. Whether or not a URI can be resolved or not is
determined only by the characteristics of the available resolution
services. It has always been the case that many URLs do not work in any
browser and many pure URNs will be resolved perfectly happily if you plug
them into a browser (because they call on a search engine).

That was not in fact even the lunacy I was even pointing to which was that
we should be typing url:http://cnn.com/ and urn:isbn:294849, a proposal
that was made loudly and repeatedly and was correctly ignored.

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 11:02 AM Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> really see the point in rehashing things that are 25 years old, and are now
> water under the bridge.   But neither did I think your statement should
> stand without being refuted.
>

---

From: "Matthew A. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 14:24:13 -0400

All,

The recent exchanges in this thread are not considered professional or
respectful, and not appropriate for the public list.  This is not to say
vigorous discussion is discouraged, but that we strive for that
discussion to be professional and respectful of each other.

Before further posting here and as many of us gather in Montreal, let us
take some time to reflect on the substance and content of this thread,
and consider how we should engage with -- and be engaged by -- each other.

- Sergeant-at-Arms

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 17:13:12 -0500

There must be a natural law, like Godwin's, about the IETF threads and NAT.

---

From: Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 15:53:27 -0700

> On Jul 20, 2019, at 3:13 PM, Nico Williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Unfortunately the name “Moore’s Law” is already taken :-)

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 19:03:10 -0400

> Unfortunately the name “Moore’s Law” is already taken :-)

Name it after Nico, since he coined it.  :)  (you're famous now!)

Keith

---

From: Jared Mauch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 19:05:27 -0400

Maybe call it rule 44 (or 66)

Sent from my iCar

> On Jul 20, 2019, at 7:03 PM, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 02:03:16 +0000

Absolutely agree

All that is missing is the enthusiasm.

________________________________
From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2019 10:05 AM
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker; Melinda Shore
Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List
Subject: Integrating NAT [was Re: Celebrating NAT Was: Tolerance]

Brian