Subject: [Gendispatch] Monday's interim meeting, inclusiveness, and strategy

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2020 00:36:12 -0400

I'm going to try to keep this short enough for people to read,
meaning that some details I'd explain in a longer note will get
left out.  It probably will still not be short enough; the
topic is complex.  If the result is confusing, please speak up.

After thinking about the meeting discussion and some of the
recent list postings, I think we are thinking about the issue
in very different ways.  That may be leading to some
difficulty in communications and some options getting lost.  I
see general agreement that improving the IETF's openness and
inclusivity is a good idea and that our being more sensitive to
language is part of that, as are properly implemented
anti-harassment policies and policies that mitigate against
control of technical decision-making by a small cluster of
companies and their employees and consultants.  Where I'm
seeing differences are around "why?" (e.g., is this mainly
about inclusion or mainly about responding to industry or
public trends to keep up (or improve) our image?).  

If it is the former, then I believe we need to think about it
in the context of our other efforts to educate, encourage good
behavior, and discourage bad behavior. In particular, we should
be looking at the terminology and language problem with the
approach taken in RFC 7776, i.e., that while we can and should
state general principles, individual documents and phrasing are
much more like harassment and bullying situations: while there
are patterns that repeat across people and groups, each case is
a little bit different. From that point of view, we don't have
bad documents except as a result of people making decisions
about what terminology to use... perhaps out of ignorance or
perhaps after careful consideration of alternatives. We should
be concentrating on more quiet, private, education, and
counseling at least up to the point of someone saying "that
usage was a considered decision" and then we should view the
language as an integral part of a technical specification, one
that is dealt with in the same ways as we try to reach
consensus about other aspects of such specifications. Being
more specific about particular terms and rules just invites the
sorts of debates about linguistic and cultural principles about
which the IETF has repeatedly proven to be very poor (and
demonstrating that at great length).

best,
   john