Subject: Re: Please welcome the facilitators at [email-masked]

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2016 11:16:56 -0800

Hello,

Please see the message at 
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg97290.html for 
context.  This message is not copied to the IETF Chair as he will 
read this thread.

At 14:22 23-03-2016, IETF Chair wrote:
>This arrangement is an experiment that we intend to review after 
>some time to determine both feasibility for the facilitators and 
>perceived impacts.

Seven months has elapsed since this experiment started.  If I am 
asked whether the experiment had any perceived impact, my answer 
would be that the impact is insignificant.  In terms of feasibility, 
it is a significant effort to read the [email-masked] mailing list 
daily for a long period of time to determine when there is an issue 
and when to step in.  It does not make sense to pursue this 
experiment if it did not bring anything positive to the subscribers 
of this mailing list.

Could you please send some feedback about whether it is useful to 
have Facilitators for [email-masked]?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 10:24:31 -0900

On 11/9/16 10:16 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Could you please send some feedback about whether it is useful to have
> Facilitators for [email-masked]?

The experiment appears to have had minimal impact.  It's perhaps
most helpful to consider the role of the facilitators during the
lengthy and occasionally acrimonious Singapore discussion, where
facilitation was unhelpful.

Melinda

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 11:53:35 +1300

> facilitation was unhelpful.

Which I don't think is intended as criticism of the facilitators, but
rather of ... human nature?

I would say that the notion of a truly opinion-neutral facilitator will
not work in most cases, especially during a debate on a divisive topic.
People who are being non-constructive, repetitious or off topic aren't
likely to take much notice of neutral messages or to calm down as a
result. I think it's only more Chair-like interventions (summarise opinions
and suggest a possible way forward) that will work in such cases.

The facilitator approach may work in less contentious cases (such as the
IPv10 thing that floated past a few days ago). But for those cases, back-channel
communication is often better.

   Brian

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 14:01:57 -0900

> rather of ... human nature?

Yes, exactly, and apologies if I implied otherwise.

> I think it's only more Chair-like interventions (summarise opinions

The facilitators did post summaries.  I don't think that was
actually helpful, divorced as it was from some sort of actual
facilitation/moderation process.  It looked like a lot of work
for the facilitators (for which, btw, a belated "thank you") and
for that level of effort I think we'd hope for something that
moved the discussion forward a bit more actively.

Melinda

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2016 15:45:11 -0800

Hi Brian, Melinda,

I forgot to mention that feedback should be sent to the [email-masked] 
mailing list.  Please use the existing thread ( 
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg99765.html ).

Speaking for myself, I am okay with negative criticism on this thread.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:10:38 +1000

I rather liked the rapporteur role that other SDOs had. Perhaps it
reflected their process needs in ways which aren't applicable in ours.

-G

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2016 19:10:38 -0500

SM,

I agree with Melinda, both generally and with regard to the
Singapore example.

That said, let me make an alternate suggestion.

Suppose that, instead of expecting the facilitator(s) to monitor
the IETF list, looking for problems, we try the following.  The
facilitators are viewed as problem-solvers (as now), but are not
expected to do problem-identification.   Instead, unless they
spontaneously notice a problem, they wait for someone to notice
an actual or potential problem and bring it to their attention.
Then, if they think it appropriate, they review whatever needs
to be reviewed, generate summaries if appropriate, and explain
to the authors of offensive, off-topic, or wrong topic posts
where those posts should go and what the IETF mechanisms are for
dealing with persistent offensiveness.

It seems to me that would be far less work when things were
going reasonably well, would have higher odds of being effective
when they weren't, and would provide a good escalation path when
needed.

    john

--On Wednesday, November 09, 2016 10:24 -0900 Melinda Shore
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Could you please send some feedback about whether it is
>> useful to have Facilitators for [email-masked]?
> 
> The experiment appears to have had minimal impact.  It's
> perhaps most helpful to consider the role of the facilitators
> during the lengthy and occasionally acrimonious Singapore
> discussion, where facilitation was unhelpful.

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2016 21:55:11 -0800

Hi John,
>That said, let me make an alternate suggestion.

I was contacted two or three times over the last seven months about 
an issue.  Within the context of the experiment there hasn't been any 
noteworthy discussion over the last few months.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 08:53:42 -0500

--On Wednesday, November 09, 2016 21:55 -0800 S Moonesamy
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I was contacted two or three times over the last seven months
> about an issue.  Within the context of the experiment there
> hasn't been any noteworthy discussion over the last few months.

That is consistent with the point I was trying to make.  Part of
what I understood you to say was that the role, as currently
defined, was taking up too much time as compared to value and
your and Melinda to suggest that there weren't a lot of cases in
which it was likely to be particularly effective.  I think there
is still potential value in the general concept and in
mechanisms that were lighter-weight and more about focusing
discussions, reducing repetition, and educating participants
than the Sergeant at Arms procedures.   If so, or we want to
carry out _that_ experiment, the right next step is to reduce
the workload to be more proportionate to both need and acutal
value.

That said, the one thing I wish you had done but didn't (and may
not have had the mandate to do) was to post those summaries with
enough confidence, and presumption of community backing, to be
able to say "these subthreads have been noted, continuing to
post on them without adding anything new will be considered
disruptive and turned over to the Sergeant at Arms".  

regards,
    john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 04:19:49 +0900

> not work in most cases, especially during a debate on a divisive topic.

So...

For a facilitator to work, there are a number of conditions that need to 
be met:

   *  There has to be a clear understanding of the role of a 
facilitator.  I think Brian's phrase "opinion-neutral" gets at one of 
the core requirements.  There are others about how that neutrality is 
applied and when.  Facilitation is a profession, with lots of associated 
documents and training.  But starting with a simple, factual 
"opinion-neutral" seems like a good foundation to me.

   *  There needs to be an institutional commitment to the exercise of 
that role.  That's more than just naming some folk.  The relatively easy 
part is that it means ensuring that facilitators have the skillset and 
it means training others to appreciate that skillset.  But 'training' is 
not enough, but there also needs to be the application of leverage over 
those who contribute in a fashion that works against the facilitation. 
Unfortunately, the IETF has a deep and persistent unwillingness to apply 
such pressures.  So folk who misbehave persistently do not, themselves, 
get trained to change their behavior.  (Folk are likely to disagree with 
this assessment, especially because of various, recent documents and 
discussion --as well as the very rare interventions along the lines of 
"folk, we can do better" spread amongst multiple contributors privately 
or an entire list publicly, although such interventions have no training 
effect, long term -- but the fact that people continue to feel 
permission to attack others, on a regular basis, serves as a visible 
counter.)

   *  The role needs to be exercised extremely actively.  And this is, 
indeed, an enormous amount of work.  Worse, the nature of email and the 
fact of 7/24 traffic on IETF list email, make the need for immediate and 
continuing facilitation especially daunting.  And the fact that the 
trigger for that need can happen at any time, even more so.  One 
possible aid might be to get other participants to solicit facilitation 
as soon as they see the need.  This means we all have to have a sense of 
the conditions that warrant making the request.

and so on...

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 09:04:10 -0800

Hi John,
>which it was likely to be particularly effective.  I think there

As this is an experiment I provided some data so that Jari can draw a 
conclusion.  The time taken was more about providing information for 
the next person volunteering for the task, or a similar task.

>the workload to be more proportionate to both need and acutal

The experiment was light-weight, i.e avoid getting to Sergeant at 
Arms procedures.  Thanks for commenting about the potential value in 
the general concept.

>disruptive and turned over to the Sergeant at Arms".

I would be going beyond the experiment if I attempted to restrict a 
subscriber from posting more messages which did not contain new 
information.  It would also be at odds with the experiment being light-weight.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 13:18:35 +0000

On 09/11/16 19:16, S Moonesamy wrote:
> context.  This message is not copied to the IETF Chair as he will read
> this thread.
> 
>> This arrangement is an experiment that we intend to review after some
>> time to determine both feasibility for the facilitators and perceived
>> impacts.
> 
> Seven months has elapsed since this experiment started.  If I am asked
> whether the experiment had any perceived impact, my answer would be that
> the impact is insignificant.

Actually I thought it was maybe sorta working ok. However,
the interesting question is how we'd even know if it is
or is not working given that "working" here essentially
mean noise reduction.

If anyone (facilitators or others) had feedback to the
effect that, but for a facilitator email, someone would
have replied to some thread realising (possibly in
retrospect) that such a reply was probably unproductive,
then that could be useful to know maybe.

S.

>  In terms of feasibility, it is a
> significant effort to read the [email-masked] mailing list daily for a
> long period of time to determine when there is an issue and when to step
> in.  It does not make sense to pursue this experiment if it did not
> bring anything positive to the subscribers of this mailing list.
>

---

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:43:53 -0800

Here is my take on the facilitators experiment, from one of the volunteers
who tried doing that for 7 months. Did we make the IETF list better? Hard to
say. We have seen a couple big threads on the IETF list, and we tried
various ways to drive them towards productive outcomes. SM tended to use
formal responses "from the facilitators" through the list; I mostly used
private messages to the key participants in the thread; Carlos used both
methods. We probably helped things a little bit, but not very much. The
basic assessment is that this was probably not very useful, while requesting
quite a bit a bit of work. It also requires holding your keyboard, and not
participating in the debates that you have to facilitate.

There were limits placed on the facilitators role. We were supposed to not
intervene in matters like last calls, for which the AD in charge is supposed
to manage the debate. Then there are gray areas like discussion of IETF
tools for which there is a person in charge, but not-very-well-identified,
and there is a doubt whether facilitators should intervene. But if we
exclude last calls and tools, the scope of the facilitators is restricted to
threads about general policy like the Singapore debate, or thread about
recurring issues, like DMARC, RFC formats, and the like. As a community, we
want to have the debate. It can easily become loud and somewhat random, not
to mention repetitive. You wish someone would channel the energy and make
the debate more productive, but handling contentious issues as formal
facilitators is very hard. 

For these type of threads, the best tool is the summarization message, as in
"this is the debate so far, please progress from there". The problem is that
such summarization works better if completed by an action list, "and here is
what we could do." The facilitators have no particular authority to put up
an action list, it has to come from the IESG, the RFC editor, or the IAOC
depending on the subject. Falling an action list, the summary can easily be
ignored.

The "facilitators" find themselves stuck between two failure modes:
concentrate on a polite process and overlap with the "sergeant at arms", or
try help solve the issue and overlap with the IESG. For example, during the
Singapore debate, I was very concerned that an attempt to steer the debate
will paint the facilitators as "a tool of the IETF establishment", trying to
smooth the path for the IESG and chair. But between the sergeant at arms and
the IESG there is only room for the occasional nudge, and that could be done
just as well by responsible individuals, without a facilitator title.

So, if you want my opinion, after trying this facilitator role, I would
rather keep things simple and not create another semi-official role in the
IETF.

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2016 04:23:20 -0800

Hi Dave,
At 11:19 10-11-2016, Dave Crocker wrote:
>   *  There needs to be an institutional commitment to the exercise 
> of that role.  That's more than just naming some folk.  The 
> relatively easy part is that it means ensuring that facilitators 
> have the skillset and it means training others to appreciate that skillset.
>But 'training' is not enough, but there also needs to be the 
>application of leverage over those who contribute in a fashion that 
>works against the facilitation. Unfortunately, the IETF has a deep 
>and persistent unwillingness to apply such pressures.  So folk who 
>misbehave persistently do not, themselves, get trained to change 
>their behavior.  (Folk are likely to disagree with this assessment, 
>especially because of various, recent documents and discussion --as 
>well as the very rare interventions along the lines of "folk, we can 
>do better" spread amongst multiple contributors privately or an 
>entire list publicly, although such interventions have no training 
>permission to attack others, on a regular basis, serves as a visible counter.)

Thanks for the feedback.

The expression of a thought or idea which is acceptable to people in 
one country may be viewed as offensive by people in another 
country.  The way in which the thought is expressed may be acceptable 
to people in one country and might be viewed as offensive to people 
in another country.  There are also accepted norms to consider, e.g. 
do the subscribers of this mailing list find censorship acceptable or not?

I read the thread at 
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg99783.html  The 
person mentioned that he is new to this mailing list.  Did any of the 
messages on the thread have content which violated the rules of 
process?  Was there any harassment?  Was the topic relevant to the 
IETF?  Who in the IETF is responsible for that topic?  There aren't 
any easy answers to those questions.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy