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Re: A private club

2014-02-26 16:35:25
Hi Brian,
At 11:06 26-02-2014, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
But participation is open to everybody; if I don't choose to comment
on a draft, that is my problem, not the problem of those who do
comment. Nobody has ever told me that I am not allowed to comment.

I am using "you" for clarity. It is not intended as antagonism. You have been participating in the IETF since a long time. I don't think that someone would tell you that you are not allowed to comment.

If a person posts a comment and receives a sarcastic reply he or she will be uncomfortable to post more comments. If a person sees "someone like him/her" receiving sarcastic replies the person will be uncomfortable to post a comment.

If the only comments posted are from participants affiliated with Vendor X I would not write that there is consensus for the draft to move forward.

I'm sorry... which particular mail threads do you mean? Anyway, a
lot of comments come from a country called gmail, which you won't
find in the UN list.

There isn't a country called "gmail" in the UN list. :-) I was not pointing to a particular mail thread. If an Area Director asks for the list of countries I'll post it.

I understand that it's hard for people to understand that there
is no barrier to speech in the IETF and that there is no secret
handshake.

I beg to differ on the "barrier to speech". There is a message from a French reader at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg85043.html The IAOC and Juliao Braga had some difficulty understanding each other (if I recall correctly he asked me why I did not try to help).

There has been discussions about newcomers. I do not derive any benefit by arguing in favor of newcomers except, maybe, getting some reviews for IETF work. My conclusion from the discussions was that there are difficulties.

Really? It seems to me to be a universal aspect of human behaviour
that people are more disciplined and careful when speaking in
public than when speaking in private. If my private opinion is that
some IETF work is "Yuck", "Pointless", or "Relatively harmless"
(examples from my private notes) I am unlikely to say so in public.
I would use more analytic language.

I posted that message to ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org by mistake.

If I was having a discussion with someone I am familiar with about another person's draft I might write "relatively harmless". I have never sent a private message to an author saying "Yuck". Please note that I am not saying that the word is inappropriate.

If there is a pattern of insulting (private) comments from a person(s) who speaks nicely in public, would the regular IETF participant be aware of that? That is what I thought about when I responded to the "I trust that doesn't surprise anyone." written by John Klensin.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
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