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Discussion style and respect

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Re: Discussion style and respect

#11

Post by rustynails »

meesterdude wrote: post #2

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 invol…

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).

Re: Discussion style and respect

#12

Post by 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.

Re: Discussion style and respect

#14

Post by konstruktor »

notacoward wrote: post #8
learnstats2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h... 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 b…

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…

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.

Re: Discussion style and respect

#15

Post by learnstats2 »

notacoward wrote: post #8
learnstats2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h... 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 b…

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…

Like it or not, technology is not politcally neutral.

Saying "we should not be doing this because it only benefits multinationals and harms internet users" is an important part of any technical discussion.

Re: Discussion style and respect

#16

Post by dredmorbius »

_lce0 wrote: post #13

TIL that the IETF has a RFC about "Guidelines for Conduct" https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7154 -- plus that DDG has a !rfc bang which redirects directly to them

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/

https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=jessie&section=all&...

Re: Discussion style and respect

#17

Post by mauricemir »

jayvanguard wrote: post #12

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 ev…

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

Re: Discussion style and respect

#18

Post by lambda »

rustynails wrote: post #11
meesterdude wrote: post #2

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 invol…

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 compl…

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.

Re: Discussion style and respect

#19

Post by logn »

notacoward wrote: post #8
learnstats2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg93416.h... 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 b…

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…

Identifying conflicts of interest when evaluating systems is mentioned in the ACM Code of Ethics. It's possible to do this in a neutral/professional way.

Section 2.5: http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

Re: Discussion style and respect

#20

Post by Sven7 »

jayvanguard wrote: post #12

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 ev…

I'd say that's a good mix :) And I really don't know any subject matter experts/actual practitioners who are "reasonably neutral" :)
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