Subject: [edu-team] Education about mailing list disruption?

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:31:06 +0200

I had lunch with Daniel Karrenberg (new Chair of ISOC) today
and we discussed mailing list suspensions, among other things.

He has an interesting theory: abolish them and invest effort
instead in educating participants to simply ignore disruption.
He maintains this will be more cost-effective.

Do we think it's possible to provide effective education that
would really help here?

     Brian

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:16:09 -0500

> Do we think it's possible to provide effective education that

Think we could get a video of Randy Bush saying "procmail is your friend" 
over and over?

Somewhat more seriously, the issue here is probably slightly broader, 
because (IMO) disruption affects new participants more seriously than people 
who have experience with disruption and have learned who to argue with. So, 
if we're headed this way, we're relying more and more on new-participant 
assimilation, and we may not even be able to rely on in-person tutorials 
(since people subscribe to mailing lists and may immediately begin to 
encounter disruption).

The Tao is good, so maybe we can figure out how to better advertise it, and 
make sure that (if we head that direction) it provides the guidance that 
would support Daniel's theory.

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 08:37:44 -0700

In a word, no.

            jak

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:11:44 -0400 (EDT)

fwiw - imo teh process of kicking prople off of mailing lists is FAR
more time consuming than the person could ever be on teh list

to me education is a far better path

Scott

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     Brian

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From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:36:41 -0700

Scott,

The problem is that when a mailing list breaks down, people don't react 
logically anymore. They react emotionally. It's kind of like the death 
penalty. Disregarding for the moment retribution (which is sometimes cited 
as a reason), most people who support the death penalty do so because they 
think that it deters crime. But with the exception of organized crime, most 
people who kill someone don't do it for a logical reason. They don't think: 
"if I kill this person, I'm going to end up on death row". They just do it 
because they are overcome by the passions of the moment. For this reason, I 
don't think any amount of education is going to help.

Regarding the amount of time, it may be lots of time for the IESG and IAB, 
but it certainly saves the WG chairs a lot of time dealing with disruptive 
people, and can even save a WG from a death spiral. For example, the 
zeroconf WG was completely disrupted for over a year by negative, emotional 
email traffic. The WG chair spent countless hours trying to get the WG back 
on track, it didn't work once the mailing list had spiralled down into 
negativity. The WG ended up accomplishing nothing.

It is not as if these kinds of cases have no consequences. Mailing list 
attacks can be used by companies to torpedo or delay standards that threaten 
their business interests. They also are a kind of unprofessional behavior 
that cause other standards bodies to ignore or work around IETF.

If a decision is made to stop kicking people off mailing lists, then I think 
a policy must be developed whereby the IESG proactively shuts down WGs that 
get caught into the kind of negative spiral that killed zeroconf. Otherwise, 
it becomes an enormous waste of time for people who are trying to 
participate constructively.

            jak

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:17:11 -0400 (EDT)

> Regarding the amount of time, it may be lots of time for the IESG and IAB, 

its also lots of time on teh mailing lists - taking over in some cases

> participate constructively.

that may be needed with or without kicking people off of lists

Scott

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:47:47 +0200

On this list, let's focus on my question - is there a useful educational
effort possible?

Spencer mentioned the Tao, but actually I don't see a description of
this topic in http://www.ietf.org/tao.html. There is RFC 3184 but it's
not specific about mailing list misconduct either. RFC 1855 is non-specific.

I think there is scope here for a new module. It isn't covered in
either Newcomers or WG Chairs training as far as I can see.

     Brian

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 11:17:05 -0400

> On this list, let's focus on my question - is there a useful educational

Probably, but its impact would be limited.

going back to some points earlier

> more time consuming than the person could ever be on teh list

It certainly has been, but that is (IMO) partly because the
tools/process we have in place are somewhat flawed, and we tend to try
and tweak the process at the same time as dealing with a specific case
(or use a hammer when some other penalty better fits the crime), which
doesn't work very well.

IMO, we need to make it more straightforward to kick disruptive
individuals off list. But we need better balance than what we've been
able to do so far, to ensure that we don't have chairs/etc. kicking
people off that shouldn't be, that those that repent get back on, etc.

> to me education is a far better path

Has limits too. Works  best with those who have been around long
enough to see this. And even then, we all have our weak moments when
certain hot buttons are pressed...

For education, what might be good is some basic info about "don't get
sucked into arguing with trolls", etc. If you get sucked into a
thread, do some homework to see if the individual you are arguing with
is worth your time, etc. But this is hard. it's also not IETF
specific, and I wonder if others have written FAQs on this going back
to USENET days we could point to.

Case in point: todd glassey. What is missing in his case (and this is
common with others as well) is the equivalent of a periodic postiing
from a respected individual saying "note that although Todd posts a
lot, I no longer read his messages and do not respond to them. This is
based on previous experience, in which such debates have proven
unproductive and unhelpful to the community. Before chosing to engage,
you may want to view some previous threads" and provide pointers to
some examples.

Thomas