This has been an ongoing discussion on the ietf mailing list, spiraling down into useless discussion, once again.
I'd kicked it off with: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/2mjhGErGYRWjKb0oZH_Ddh4YI0Y (Something like 7% of the people doing ietf work currently get a vote for top management, due to the "must attend" requirement.) there is a related discussion on the same list, about fixing the recall process. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Dave Taht <dave.t...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 2:56 AM Subject: Re: voting rights in general To: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com> Cc: Stan Kalisch <s...@glyphein.mailforce.net>, IETF Discussion Mailing List <i...@ietf.org> On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 3:43 PM Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 26-Mar-19 10:13, Stan Kalisch wrote: > > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019, at 5:00 PM, Keith Moore wrote: > >> Different people have different ideas about what "unpleasant" means. > > > > They do, but what is significant is the common, shared subset of those > > ideas within a community. That subset alone can significantly determine > > who is part of a community, and who is not. > > That's true. And as we have seen more people from non-Anglo-Saxon and then > non-European cultures participate, the meaning of "unpleasant" has continued > to change, and probably to fragment. I had the good fortune to start my > professional life in the particle physics community, where being brutally > frank about a colleague's technical errors was normal, so the traditional > IETF culture was no surprise to me. But I have often seen it (by body > language) to be an unpleasant shock to new participants. Some people get used > to it, but some don't. So while I've known Keith long enough to simply say > "You're wrong, Keith" and be sure he wouldn't take it as an insult, I hope I > would always be more careful with a new participant until I know them better. > (For clarity, in this case, Keith's not wrong.) > > There's a reason the ITU and ISO tend to use very diplomatic language and > very formal procedures. I'm not saying we should do that, but it isn't OK to > just ignore the issue of different cultural expectations. In my life, I have been very empowered by the idea of clear, and frank discussions. The oft-brutal game of "Dealer", at Xerox PARC, the only mandatory meeting, where the participants were encouraged to go at each other with every form of technical criticism - and then go have a beer - made for good code. Also, I have found "kelly johnson's rules" to be very effective. Notably, in ietf context: "The designers of the airplane should be on the shop floor while the first ones are built." What george carlin damns as "soft language" in (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY infests the ietf today. In order to be successfully implemented, a specification MUST be short, clear, and unambigious. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman > Brian > -- Dave Täht CTO, TekLibre, LLC http://www.teklibre.com Tel: 1-831-205-9740 -- Dave Täht CTO, TekLibre, LLC http://www.teklibre.com Tel: 1-831-205-9740 _______________________________________________ Bloat mailing list Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
