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.
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.
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).
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.
>>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.
Unfortunately, that is very typical of Western (USA/Europe) nerds as they always claim to be right. I cannot make that claim for nerds of Asia.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
Readit News
- 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.
Non tariff barriers also come into play eg why you can't buy a land rover in the USA
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.
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).
Unfortunately, that is very typical of Western (USA/Europe) nerds as they always claim to be right. I cannot make that claim for nerds of Asia.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7154
--
plus that DDG has a !rfc bang which redirects directly to them
With the dwww package, you can browse them locally at http://localhost/dwww/
https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=jessie§ion=all&...
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h...
"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?
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.