

Discussion style and respect - atlas1j
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg14217.html

======
jayvanguard
Standards groups tend to attract people who are Right Right Right. Typical
make-up of a standards group:

\- Two to three professional IT standards people. Haven't written code in
years, limited actual influence back in the companies they work for. Usually
report in to the "office of the CTO".

\- One or two people ruthlessly out to promote their companies point of view
because their products depend on it. Often don't even pretend to be
diplomatic. Politicians.

\- One or two academics representing their personal research whims and
interests. They have little to no actual skin in the game. Often derail onto
irrelevant topics.

\- One to two people who know the area deeply, are actual practitioners with
hands on skills in the area, and are reasonably neutral.

~~~
mauricemir
I think your forgetting national interests and NIH - The Joke that the 8th
layer OSI is Politics has some basis in reality.

Non tariff barriers also come into play eg why you can't buy a land rover in
the USA

------
meesterdude
I think some people get so combative because their identity is wrapped up in
being right. It's unfortunate, given our capacity to collaborate and build,
that we still struggle with these scuffs.

I think if you want respectful discourse, it has to be part of the culture of
the community; where behavior is enforced at a group level, more than an
administrative or rule based.

There will always be a range of people involved, and even the best of people
have bad days; coupled with the fact that most people usually mean well, I've
found it's best to cut people some slack if you have the chance.

~~~
rustynails
Can you clarify "I think some people get so combative because their identity
is wrapped up in being right."? If people are discussing a topic, I want
people to say "what is true" where it adds value to the discussion. I feel
that "right" misses the basis of what and why and is largely irrelevant to
Respect in conflict.

Conflict is good when managed and it adds value. You usually end up with more
rounded or more complete ideas. This can fail when there is a lack of respect
between adversaries, a lack of understanding or a lack of truth from at least
one side.

On your point of community vigilance, Administrators/site owners should set
the rules of engagement and a culture (eg. No ad hominem attacks). If the
community determines the rules of engagement, you can have the community
derail itself far too easily. I'm seeing quite a few communities lose the plot
recently through political correctness or through a hostile community that
self-regulates. One of the best sites I visit is very rule based. The
moderators do a great job of setting the rules and when the community loses
focus, the site owner/moderators recalibrate. I keep thinking of leaders vs
committees as a good parallel.

I don't have simple rules about what rules should be applied to respect in
conflict. There are several examples of exceptions that come to mind: Karl
Popper talks about not tolerating the intolerant; Political Correctness can
introduce prejudice (and has spoilt some good communities).

~~~
lambda
In most of these discussions, there is no one "true" answer. There are
engineering tradeoffs. There are design decisions, about what will be most
easy for people to work with, least likely for someone to screw up and break
the whole system. There is inertia of existing systems, that would cost a lot
of money to rewrite, and tradeoffs of what will be the lowest cost solution.

------
eridal
TIL that the IETF has a RFC about "Guidelines for Conduct"

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7154](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7154)

\--

plus that DDG has a !rfc bang which redirects directly to them

~~~
dredmorbius
There are also several Debian RFC packages in the event you care to have local
access to a copy. The full set's surprisingly large.

With the dwww package, you can browse them locally at
[http://localhost/dwww/](http://localhost/dwww/)

[https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=jessie&section=all&...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=jessie&section=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=doc-
rfc)

------
tempodox
The phenomena addressed in that mail are very common. There isn't an
organisation in the world that couldn't use those remonstrances from time to
time. We're all just human.

------
majke
What's the context? Which discussion was particularly heated?

~~~
notacoward
Probably multiple, but this one certainly seems to qualify.

[http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h...](http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.html)

"TLS everywhere is great for large companies with a financial stake in
Internet centralization. It is even better for those providing identity
services and TLS-outsourcing via CDNs. It's a shame that the IETF has been
abused in this way"

Looks like a very unprofessional and offensive attribution of motive, which
completely fails to keep the conversation on a constructive course.

P.S. Nice to see someone's trying to bury this. It's exactly the kind of thing
the OP talks about, provided in direct response to a question. How could that
possibly be worth a non-partisan downvote?

~~~
learnstats2
> [http://www.ietf.org/mail-
> archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h...](http://www.ietf.org/mail-
> archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.html)

This post seems like reasonable criticism to me. It doesn't attack any
individual.

It's fair to attribute motive for a particular agenda. The discussion would
not be complete without considering conflict-of-interest motivations of the
participants.

It also seems fair to say that Google and other companies with the goal of
Internet centralization have been pushing this, and that this is one of the
likely motivations for them.

It also seems fair to point out, in a technical way, that HTTPS-everywhere is
not capable of achieving the goals that its proponents claim it will, and that
it is more likely to be harmful to those goals.

The last sentence that you quote is perhaps unhelpful but the "rough
consensus" decision-making model of the IETF creates a perfect situation for
lobbyists from large companies to control the agenda. This can be seen as an
abuse.

 _Edited to add:_ I would be very concerned if the chair of the IETF was
seeking to quash discussion of this type. That would only prove there is a
serious problem.

~~~
notacoward
No. Attribution of motive is never helpful or appropriate as part of a
supposedly-technical discussion. If it were, then maybe someone should also
mention Fielding's own interest in enabling insertion of ads by proxies. But
no, that's exactly the kind of thing the IETF chair's message was trying to
address, for all parties involved. If there's a problem with lobbying and
conflicts of interest, that needs to be taken up at an organizational level,
not as part of the technical debate.

In any case, whether you think that kind of behavior is appropriate or not is
kind of irrelevant. That wasn't the question. The question was what motivated
the IETF chair's message. Can anyone deny that the hostility and accusatory
tone of a message that has been splattered all over the internet today might
be part of that motivation?

~~~
konstruktor
Many engineers often seem to forget that their work has impact on the lives of
people. I think that, in the part of the email that you are not quoting, Roy
Fielding makes a very good point that TLS everywhere is not just a technical
issue, but has significant social implication.

Thus, incentives and motives are very valid concerns. If the IETF's idea of
professionalism precludes the discussion of ethical concerns, it needs to
change.

~~~
notacoward
Discussion of ethical concerns is important, but vague accusations that fail
to identify any specific party or the nature of their interest are not a
discussion, nor are they conducive to such a discussion being productive.

------
late2part
How far away is censorship? The IETF has always been a rough and tumble group,
with consensus over voting or process. I encourage respect and politeness, but
the tone of Jari's email seems a little condescending and schoolmarm to me.

