Subject: Fwd: Initial suggestion from the IETF SAA

From: IETF Sergeant at Arms <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:13:22 +0530

Hi,

As requested by Lloyd, this initial suggestion is being made public.

Thanks,
Dhruv on behalf of the SAA team

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Initial suggestion from the IETF SAA
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 08:09:14 +0530
From: IETF Sergeant at Arms <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Organization: IETF
To: Lloyd W <lloyd.wood=[email-masked]>

Hi Lloyd,

I am writing to you on behalf of the sergeant-at-arms (SAA) team for 
[email-masked]. This message has been vetted with others on the SAA team, 
which is described in more detail at [1].

We are reaching out to you because of your recent message to 
[email-masked] [2]. The message contained the following language:

Establishing the TERM workgroup gives Niels and his colleagues a space 
in which to practise and better their authoritarian thought policing 
(sorry, 'governance'), out of the general view, in a safe area away from 
disturbance.

which the SAA team considers unprofessional commentary [3] for being a 
personal attack. Please try to avoid using this kind of language on 
[email-masked] in the future. We are happy to discuss suggestions for how 
to convey the same message in an appropriate way if you would like to 
discuss that.

We consider this an initial suggestion. We do not believe your message 
is part of a pattern of abuse that would warrant the restriction of your 
posting rights. If we see such a pattern emerge, we will get back in 
touch with you to suggest that you voluntarily take a break from posting 
to the list.

If you wish for us to make this message public, please let us know and 
we will re-send it with [email-masked] on cc.

Thanks,
Dhruv Dhody

[1] https://www.ietf.org/how/lists/discussion/
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/y8en2dH7bYfYOCbBKj-Ovr1Wkd8/
[3] https://github.com/ietf/saa/blob/master/unprofessional-commentary.md

On 06/04/21 5:57 am, Lloyd W wrote:
> I agree: TERM will not be a technical workgroup, and will not be 
> conducting technical discussion.
> 
> It's worth noting that TERM is specifically being chartered initially to 
> produce an INFORMATIONAL document sans BCP tag, which sort-of gets 
> around the BCP would-affect-all-IETF problem. Why, those aren't 
> recommendations at all. Not binding on the IETF or how it works. Nothing 
> to see here.
> 
> I'm sure we can all think of documents, throughout history, that started 
> out as simply for information, and turned into something else entirely. 
> And I'd like to point out the CAPS standards keywords used  throughout 
> draft-knodel-terminology, which are not at all appropriate in 
> informational documents that cannot make such recommendations. Really, 
> starting out as informational is a minor speedbump on the road to 
> success, and the controlling aspirations of that document are quite clear.
> 
> Establishing the TERM workgroup gives Niels and his colleagues a space 
> in which to practise and better their authoritarian thought policing 
> (sorry, 'governance'), out of the general view, in a safe area away from 
> disturbance. Think of TERM as the Protocol Police Academy. They're 
> citizens on patrol!
> 
> If you have opinions on TERM's formation, please do submit them to 
> [email-masked] before that deadline. Today.
> 
> thanks
> 
> Lloyd Wood
> [email-masked]
> 
>> On 6 Apr 2021, at 09:12, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> For some reason I can't find the original announcement, so I'll just 
>> do this bare.
>>
>>
>> Given the general language of RFC 2418, my best take is that _*it's 
>> inappropriate for the IETF to charter a working group on this 
>> topic*_.   It's not a technical topic, and it does not fit the general 
>> WG model.
>>
>> To my best recollection (which means I may have missed one), we've 
>> never chartered a WG solely for the purpose of writing documents that 
>> purport to modify the way the IETF does business. Such documents have 
>> usually come either as IESG / IAB authored/sponsored BCPs.  Indeed, 
>> BCP 95 was just such a document.   WGs have been (should be?) for 
>> technical activities related to specifying how the Internet works.
>>
>> <minirant>Technical WGs at least have the possibility of achieving 
>> consensus based on the analysis of tradeoffs of hard facts and good 
>> analysis.  A "WG" such as TERM may fail of achieving even WG 
>> consensus, let alone community consensus (especially given the current 
>> ongoing discussions) and there will be no fall back to fact analysis 
>> possible.   I can't see any way an appeal could be managed in those 
>> circumstances and I strongly suggest we do not try to place this in 
>> the WG model.</minirant>
>>
>> Since the proposed charter for Term will effect more than just the 
>> standards process (e.g. it potentially effects all of the current and 
>> future RFC streams), it would appear this should be handled either as 
>> an IAB activity (either authored, or referred to a workshop), or 
>> deferred until the RFCED group completes its work and can have this 
>> assigned as a work item.
>>
>> My first preference is to do this as an IAB Workshop report with no 
>> BCP tag and with as dispassionate an analysis and output language as 
>> possible.  E.g. explanatory language vs directive.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 22:24:02 +0900

> personal attack.

Regarding fair criticism on management or obviously-management-to-be
person as "personal attack" by the SAA team is obviously judged to
be offense to the public and, according to the criteria of
Brian Carpenter, the SAA team must be deleted.

Any objections?

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 23:02:06 +0900

IETF Sergeant at Arms wrote:

> We consider this an initial suggestion. We do not believe your
> message is part of a pattern of abuse that would warrant the
> restriction of your posting rights. If we see such a pattern emerge,
> we will get back in touch with you to suggest that you voluntarily
> take a break from posting to the list.
That is definitely *NOT* something for which the SAA team was provided.

Provisional (that is, we have enough time for general public react
provisionally) suggestions *MUST NOT* be made by the SAA team.

It causes the so evil and feared "chilling effect".

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:42:38 -0400

I agree to some extent with the SAA(s) here, and was about to send a 
private message to Lloyd about the same message.  But I do have a 
request of the SAAs:

Put please don't use the word "unprofessional" or offer judgments about 
that as reasons to push back on someone, because notions of 
"professional" include some pretty heinous prejudices. "Professional" 
without qualification is nothing to aspire to, and vague nonspecific 
criticisms can have every bit as much of a chilling effect on legitimate 
conversation as what you're complaining about, if not worse.

It's sufficient to say that Lloyd's message is making an assessment of 
others' motives.   This should be avoided even if the assessment is not 
viewed as an "attack".

Thank you.

Keith

p.s. IMO all such actions by the SAAs should be public, because there's 
a danger of selective enforcement as a means to discourage some 
participants while leaving others free to be abusive.

On 4/6/21 12:43 AM, IETF Sergeant at Arms wrote:
> (sorry, 'governance'), out of the general view, in a safe area away 
> from disturbance.
>
> [email-masked] in the future. We are happy to discuss suggestions for 
> how to convey the same message in an appropriate way if you would like 
> to discuss that.

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:26:34 -0500

On 4/6/21 09:42, Keith Moore wrote:
> Put please don't use the word "unprofessional"...

If you'd like to change this, I suggest you put forth an RFC 3005-bis 
document and bring it to GENDISPATCH to see if you can gauge whether 
consensus has changed since it was published. Quoting:

>     Inappropriate postings include:
>
> ...
>      - Unprofessional commentary, regardless of the general subject

The SAA team is established by that IETF consensus document and their 
actions are both defined and constrained by it. It's fine to express 
opinions in the rough, but you can't expect a change in process unless 
you formally demonstrate that consensus has changed since its publication.

/a

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 11:32:51 -0400

On 4/6/21 11:26 AM, Adam Roach wrote:

> consensus has changed since it was published.
>
Thanks for the suggestion, though based on experience with this WG to 
date, I can't say that I have a great faith in gendispatch as a fair way 
of vetting IETF consensus.

Let me just suggest for now that if the SAAs find some language 
"unprofessional" then there's probably a more specific reason that they 
could cite that would provide better feedback to the author.   And if 
the SAAs can't find a more specific reason for labeling something 
"unprofessional", maybe they should reconsider it.

thanks,

Keith

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:48:30 -0500

On 4/6/21 10:32, Keith Moore wrote:
> "unprofessional" then there's probably a more specific reason that 
> they could cite that would provide better feedback to the author.   
> And if the SAAs can't find a more specific reason for labeling 
> something "unprofessional", maybe they should reconsider it. 

I'm not arguing with your point (nor am I agreeing with it); I'm just 
saying that you're directing it to the wrong people. The SAA have been 
asked to do a job by the IETF (the whole IETF, as a consensus position), 
and it's unseemly to dress them down for doing it. If you want the job 
to change, then work to change the job description. Asking the SAA to 
selectively ignore parts of the job description based on individual 
input is risky: I would just as much object to someone suggesting that 
the SAA ignore the "and represents a pattern of abuse" portion of their 
job description so as to start instituting mailing list bans based on a 
single message.

/a

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 13:10:22 -0400

On 4/6/21 11:48 AM, Adam Roach wrote:

> asked to do a job by the IETF (the whole IETF, as a consensus 
> position), and it's unseemly to dress them down for doing it. If you 
> want the job to change, then work to change the job description. 
> Asking the SAA to selectively ignore parts of the job description 
> based on individual input is risky: I would just as much object to 
> someone suggesting that the SAA ignore the "and represents a pattern 
> of abuse" portion of their job description so as to start instituting 
> mailing list bans based on a single message.

Ok, I didn't think I was asking you to do anything that contradicted RFC 
3005 and I understand that any change to the actual language requires 
IETF Consensus.   I do think, however, that since the document you 
referred to [1] explicitly says that "unprofessional commentary is not 
further described in RFC 3005", and also that the specific criteria for 
"unprofessional commentary" in [1] are the opinions of the 
sergeant-at-arms team [*], it's reasonable to try to make constructive 
suggestions for better interpretations of the term "unprofessional 
commentary" until RFC 3005 can be updated.   So please interpret my 
comments as attempts at constructive suggestions.

thanks,

Keith

[1] https://github.com/ietf/saa/blob/master/unprofessional-commentary.md

[*] Despite one non-SAA having committed a change to that document.

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 12:14:14 -0500

On 4/6/21 12:10, Keith Moore wrote:
>
> Ok, I didn't think I was asking you to do anything that contradicted 
> RFC 3005 and I understand that any change to the actual language 
> requires IETF Consensus.   I do think, however, that since the 
> document you referred to [1]
>
>

I did? Where? The only thing I cited was a literal excerpt of RFC 3005.

/a

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 13:25:14 -0400

> I did? Where? The only thing I cited was a literal excerpt of RFC 3005.
Oh, sorry.   I was citing a document referenced in a message by Dhruv 
Dhody posting as [email-masked].   Sorry for the mis-attribution.

Keith

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 22:43:47 +0900

> you formally demonstrate that consensus has changed since its publication.

So, there can't be provisional warning by the SAA team, not even
private ones.

						Masataka Ohta