Subject: [Terminology] Francesca Palombini's Abstain on charter-ietf-term-00-03: (with COMMENT)

From: Francesca Palombini via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2021 05:39:35 -0700

Francesca Palombini has entered the following ballot position for
charter-ietf-term-00-03: Abstain

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The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-term/

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COMMENT:
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While I also agree with my co-ADs that any effort to make the IETF more
inclusive is important (and I won't repeat everything Warren, Rob or Éric
already said about supporting inclusivity efforts in IETF and aligning with
other SDO's similar efforts) I don't think I can ballot anything else than
Abstain. If there was a Recuse button, I would ballot that instead, but as
there is not I am abstaining instead. There are mainly two reasons for this:

1. And most important - I have co-chaired gendispatch and shepherded the first
proposal on this topic through the recommendation to create a WG (based on
draft-gondwana-effective-terminology) [1], and although I have been as unbiased
as possible, it would feel strange for me to approve on the chartering of this
working group, while I also (together with my co-chair and AD at the time)
evaluated the community consensus that lead to effort on chartering the working
group.

2. Because I have followed the discussion on the topic very actively, if not
since the beginning at least since its arrival in gendispatch at IETF108, I am
concerned about the potential of this work to create divisiveness and hurt in
the community, and I am worried about the potential of the working group of
being destructive rather than constructive.

The conclusion is that I have a serious concern about this working group being
chartered, but as my concern is not actionable, and as I stand behind my
evaluation of consensus at the time of chairing gendispatch (after hearing the
community speak in 1 meeting, 2 interims [2], and countless emails [3]), I will
not block this effort. I however wanted to mark my opinion and make sure the
resp AD and the whole IESG pays particular attention to its evolution.

Thank you Ben for summarizing the last set of comments we got on the charter.
Additionally, as an actionable comment, I still think mentioning in the charter
that draft-gondwana-effective-terminology is the starting point of this work
might help.

Francesca

[1]
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/iHDh7KBVRvGB2EWKYYh11LjP95E/
[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-108-gendispatch/
      https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-interim-2020-gendispatch-01-202009012000/
      https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-interim-2020-gendispatch-03-202009071100/
[3] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/gendispatch/?q=terminology
(excerpt, I know there is more)