Subject: John Cowan supports 3683 PR-action against Jefsey Morfin

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:52:57 -0500

I wish to state my strong support for the proposed RFC 3638 PR-action
against Jefsey Morfin.

Jefsey has made life nearly intolerable for those of us on the
[email-masked] and [email-masked] lists.  Banning him on a monthly
basis is insufficient; as soon as the ban is lifted, he returns to his
old habits of posting endless streams of irrelevant noise, vague threats,
and other forms of mailing list abuse.  He must then be warned and then
banned again in a purposeless monthly ritual.

Filtering him out individually, as I do, is insufficient: one still must
read the polite or exasperated responses of others.  I am almost at the
point where I will filter any posting that so much as *mentions* him.

In addition, I have been the direct victim of Jefsey's spleen: he
stepped outside the IETF context to send a request to my then employer
to have me disciplined by that employer for "unprofessional conduct".
As a result, my employer ordered me not to respond to him any more,
but since I have now left that employer, I will take this one action.
I will not stoop to taking revenge in kind, as I want nothing more than
never to hear from him or of him again.

-- 
Don't be so humble.  You're not that great.             John Cowan
        --Golda Meir                                    [email-masked]

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:36:11 +0100

> point where I will filter any posting that so much as *mentions* him.

Why don't you do that, then, so that he need not be banned just for
your convenience?

> never to hear from him or of him again.

But you still mention irrelevant matters external to this mailing list
in your post. Any personal problem you may have with someone outside
the list (or vice versa) is completely unrelated to IETF work or
mailing lists, and the inconvenience you suffer from having to press
the delete key is also only very tenuously linked to this list.

Maybe your employer's advice wasn't so bad.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 17:23:08 +0100

On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 04:36:11PM +0100,
 Anthony G. Atkielski <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 31 lines which said:

> and the inconvenience you suffer from having to press the delete key

It is not just a matter of personal inconvenience: if the filtering is
done at the edges and not in the IETF mailing list engine, it also
means that public email archives (which are a very important tool for
the IETF) are polluted by the useless messages sent by people like
Jefsey Morfin.

RFC 3028 is not a sufficient solution for dealing with these people.

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 17:32:05 +0100

> Why don't you do that, then, so that he need not be banned just for

And then suddenly somebody makes a seriously good contribution and your
filter accidentally filters out that message which does have a lot of
value and thus importance for the working group. The signal to noise
ratio has risen way too much by all this talk about one person and
simply takes away a lot of time from a lot of people who can do a lot
more technically interesting work when that ratio is brought back to
signal instead of just being noise. Being able to completely shutdown a
person after having repeatedly warned that person about his behavior is
the only real solution here.

Another aspect is that the mailing lists also contains those
non-technical,non-wg-relevant discussions which effectively are on the
level of Usenet-alike flame war going back and forth in the mailing list
archives. Anybody wanting to join the wg will only find those messages,
possibly missing out on the things that really matter. That doesn't help
in progressing the task of the working group at all. Discussions should
be based on technical aspects relevant to that working group, not to a
myriad of other arguments which are far from the topic of the WG's task.

Yes, it is excluding somebody from giving his viewpoints, but it is not
without arguments that this will be done and the person who this is
bestowed upon has had many chances of bettering his way of posting and
drifting off topic all the time.

Note also that the PR only allows the complete banishment from the list
if that WG decides that that is deemed necessary. Other WG's which do
not have a problem with the postings of a PR'd person can freely choose
to accept them, but of course then have a choice to ban the person too.

[..]
> the delete key is also only very tenuously linked to this list.

Thus in your opinion you tolerate the behavior where people contact your
boss for actions you take personally (IETF is on personal basis not on
business basis, at least in theory) on a public forum!?

Another way to look at your point of view is to say that mailinglists
should accept spam. As the enduser who receives the list should simply
filter them out.

If somebody has a problem with you in the way you are behaving in such a
forum one contacts the list administrator or working group chair. It's a
list issue when it originates on the list, not a business issue, thus
your boss has absolutely no relevance in this area. It more sounds like
such a method can only be meant as a backstabbing 'teach a lesson'
method to a person than anything else. What good does that bring?
Or do you also call up the wife of the WG chair when you don't like his
decision to complain to him that she should give him food that evening
as you don't have any arguments left any more and simply start doing ad
hominem attacks?

> Maybe your employer's advice wasn't so bad.

That is is true of course, looking at the situation, taking a bit of a
stand-off point of view, reiterating things before doing etc are a good
thing, but sometimes the SnR ratio simply becomes way to high...

Greets,
 Jeroen

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:04:49 +0100

Anthony G. Atkielski wrote:

> banned just for your convenience?

Are you sure that you have read and understood
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ltru/1033> ?

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:24:57 +0100

Jeroen Massar writes:

> value and thus importance for the working group.

Banning someone has the same effect, if that person has ever made any
useful contributions at all (and that applies to just about everyone).

Besides, you can filter without loss--by actually looking at messages.

> The signal to noise ratio has risen way too much by all this talk
> about one person and simply takes away a lot of time from a lot of
> people who can do a lot more technically interesting work when that
> ratio is brought back to signal instead of just being noise. Being
> able to completely shutdown a person after having repeatedly warned
> that person about his behavior is the only real solution here.

Most of the noise and disturbance I see isn't coming from a single
person, but from a lynch mob so obsessed with silencing someone they
don't like that they can't even do their jobs.

Why aren't you working on something productive, instead of joining in
this discussion, which precisely matches your apparent definition of
useless noise?  Why is it bad when someone else does it, but okay if
you do it?

> drifting off topic all the time.

What about excluding everyone else who whines about that person?
Wouldn't that make sense, too?

Then again, would there be anyone left if the same rules applied to
everyone?

> business basis, at least in theory) on a public forum!?

No, I don't ... but I don't discuss them on the public forum.  I
discuss them with my lawyer, and all corrective action is taken
offline.  When someone libels you to your employer, complaining about
it on a mailing list is not the answer.

> should accept spam. As the enduser who receives the list should simply

Yes.  There's no way to reliably eliminate spam in an automated way,
so either you let it through and tolerate a lot of mail that isn't
important, or you block it and lose legitimate messages that you need
to see.  I need to see legitimate messages a lot more than I need to
block messages I find inconvenient, so I don't filter anything.  That
means I have to spend a few seconds deleting hundreds of spam messages
or more each day, but it vastly diminishes the possibility of me
losing legitimate e-mail.

> thing, but sometimes the SnR ratio simply becomes way to high...

No, sometimes the ability to stay cool is way too low.  But that's the
problem of the person who flies off the handle, not anyone else.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:26:07 +0100

> the IETF) are polluted by the useless messages sent by people like

Since public archives are usually a violation of copyright, anyway,
the entities that maintain them are poorly placed to complain.

And archives can be purged after the fact, without impairing the flow
of messages to the list in real time.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:29:32 +0100

> <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ltru/1033> ?

I'm sure that I'm not interested in it.  It has nothing to do with the
IETF.

---

From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:13:48 -0500 (EST)

<delurk><lawyer>

If you post to a list with a publicly announced public archive -- and even 
more so if you are informed about the archive at the time you join the 
list (hint: you usually are) -- then I think it's pretty clear under US 
law (and, I'd imagine but don't actually know, also the law of most 
civilized countries) that you are impliedly granting a license to archive 
by posting to the list.  Hence the archive is not a copyright violation.

Interesting academic questions might, or might not, arise if in a given 
post one attempted to assert that the implied license is being revoked for 
that post (including the issue of whether given the automation 
involved such an assertion could be legally effective), but they have low 
operational relevance to date.

</lawyer></delurk>

-- 
http://www.icannwatch.org   Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net
A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   [email-masked]
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
                        -->It's warm here.<--

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:10:48 +0100

> by posting to the list.  Hence the archive is not a copyright violation.

The key phrase here is "you are informed."  You have to be informed
and agree to it.  Forcing someone to click on a button that
acknowledges reading about the archive is a way to do this (commonly
used for software and various Web sites).  Just assuming that someone
has read fine print somewhere on some Web page associated with the
list is not sufficient, however.

> operational relevance to date.

Well, that would depend on the agreement, wouldn't it?  Which is all
the more reason to compel a participant to read about archiving
permission and agree to it explicitly in some way.

There are more egregious infringements on the Net, such as Turn It In.

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:13:43 +0100

Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> <delurk><lawyer>
> 
> If you post to a list with a publicly announced public archive -- and
> even more so if you are informed about the archive at the time you join
> the list (hint: you usually are) -- then I think it's pretty clear under
> US law [..]

IANAL but one really doesn't have to bother with US law, that really
doesn't apply to many folks (fortunately :) There is a much better thing
than US law, it's called IETF, and the fact that there is:
http://www.ietf.org/maillist-new.html which contains:
8<--------------
All IETF Contributions are subject to the rules of RFC 3978 and RFC 3979.
-------------->8
Mailinglist traffic also are subject to that.
One gets a copy of this when signing up for the various lists.

> the entities that maintain them are poorly placed to complain.

According to you Google and every other website indexing service is a
violation of copyright, better get sue'ing then, you might get rich.

> of messages to the list in real time.

Archives are meant to store things, which is what they are doing, if you
don't want to contribute then simply don't.

Greets,
 Jeroen

(Who wonders that now I've quoted mr Atkielski if I am in violation of
his copyright...)

---

From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 09:23:49 +1100

Jeroen Massar wrote:
	[..]
> (Who wonders that now I've quoted mr Atkielski if I am in violation of

Well, you certainly caused some his blather to make it past my
receiver-side filters.... ironic, given the context of the thread.

cheers,
gja

---

From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:14:31 -0500

> Why don't you do that, then, so that he need not be banned just for

The problem with the "just filter" approach is that if you then fail
to respond to something of substance that got inadvertently filtered
out, it is trivially easy to claim rough consensus.  So if everyone
followed your advice (except for the poor wg chair, who has to judge
consensus, so he/she would be forced to read through all of the
dreck), it would be trivially easy for a group to get something past
the wg; just have 2 or 3 people suggest something that would normally
be controversial, insert the keyword "<Jefsey> somewhere in the text,
and then when no one responds because they have all filtered out any
text containing the word "Jefsey", the 2 or 3 people can claim rough
consensus and the change goes in.  :-)

						- Ted

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:24:07 +0100

At 17:32 23/01/2006, Jeroen Massar wrote:
>Thus in your opinion you tolerate the behavior where people contact 
>your boss for actions you take personally (IETF is on personal basis 
>not on business basis, at least in theory) on a public forum!?

I do not want to add to the triggered DoS. I only suggest you do as 
Marhall did: read the archives and speak the truth. I obviously 
forgive John Cowan. But when you use your corporate mail to harass 
someone, his clients find it in Google. He can lose some, as we did 
or they can call your corporation. And you need help, what I 
provided; and he needs it to stop, what I obtained. I am surprised no 
one realises that a PR action is a license to publicly defame a 
person, terminate projects and kill small businesses or non-profits. 
That has consequences on him and on the people and R&D he subsidises 
(I am my own boss for 20 years). People may also get ashamed or feel 
stupid further on.

Should RFC 3066 be applied and the IANA manage, publish and control 
the [email-masked] mailing list, appealing on competent 
local experts from everywhere, on an equal no harassment lingual 
opportunity basis, you would have never heard of me - except through 
my currently delayed projects.  But RFC 3066 Bis cleaning, Tunis 
covenant, officially floated possible IANA sale start bettering the 
things. I won. Bickering and bittering will not change that on the 
long range. It should be time for everyone to accept the open use implications.

jfc

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:17:23 -0500

Assuming I have properly understood Mr. Morfin's email, the best argument I 
have seen for permitting all IETF email list adminsitrators to ban him as 
they deem necessary is his own description of his behavior.

Mr. Morfin appears to have stated that if he feels an opinion is important 
he will push for it (as he should.)  He has also indicated that he will 
keep pushing for it on any and all mailing lists even after the working 
group chair has determined that a rough consensus exists.

If I have understood his postings in this discussion correctly, Mr. Morfin 
has specifically indicated that he intends to behave in ways that are not 
in accord with the rules.  It seems to me that the sensible response to a 
notice of intended misbehavior is to be prepared to respond immediately and 
directly to such behavior.

The proposed action specifically gives the list managers / chairs that 
necessary authority in the light of Mr. Morfin's exhibited and asserted 
behavior.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:39:47 +0100

Dear Joel,
I am afraid you rebuild the rules while I respect them. A WG Chair is 
not God the Father. In its wisdom the IETF has devised an appeal 
mechanism. I oppose positions of a WG-Chair and of a Mailing List 
Owner. So, I use and respect that mechanism. I always respected its 
decisions. All my action is precisely to force these decisions when 
they are missing, so we can respect them. Do you deny me that right?

The current action against me seems to have been launched to 
interferes with a peaceful consideration of two long time annouced 
appeals, one now with the IESG over RFC 3066 Bis; and one with the 
IAB, over the ethic and usage impact and the documentation of the 
Multilingual Internet. Amusingly removing or limiting my rights of 
appeal was one of the first propositions. The IETF would lose every 
technical credibility. It would become the publisher of the bigger.

As you say, I said the involved questions are important enough to 
call for a decision by the IAB in the technical areas, and of the 
other appropriate appeal entities in the areas of applications. Do 
you object that too? The IAB Chair has indicated the IAB will 
respond. The IESG works on the other very seriously as far as I know, 
from the questions they ask. These appeals and my responses not only 
fully state that I will respect the final IAB (IESG) decisions, but 
explain how.

I suggest that you do as Marshall. Consult the archives and read the 
appeals. Then speak the thruth. I am supposed to be out off-topic in 
an engineering group? Show me off-topic! My positions are documented 
by two technical documents on the IAB and the IESG sites and are 
seriously considered. Yet I have not heard a ***_single_ *** 
technical objection. Should not the first question, even before my 
liberty of speach, be if I am right?

http://iab.org/appeals/2006-01-04-jefsey-appeal.pdf
http://ietf.org/IESG/APPEALS/jefsey-morfin-appeal.txt

We are not here to waste time in childish disputes. Should I appeal 
the IESG against my last [email-masked] last ban? 
SHould I question the COI of some IESG Members? We are to document 
the best solutions for the Internet designers, users and managers. I 
do not feel that this thread remembers that.

All the best
jfc

At 03:17 24/01/2006, Joel M. Halpern wrote:

>Assuming I have properly understood Mr. Morfin's email, the best 
>argument I have seen for permitting all IETF email list 
>adminsitrators to ban him as they deem necessary is his own 
>description of his behavior.
>
>Mr. Morfin appears to have stated that if he feels an opinion is 
>important he will push for it (as he should.)  He has also indicated 
>that he will keep pushing for it on any and all mailing lists even 
>after the working group chair has determined that a rough consensus exists.
>
>If I have understood his postings in this discussion correctly, Mr. 
>Morfin has specifically indicated that he intends to behave in ways 
>that are not in accord with the rules.  It seems to me that the 
>sensible response to a notice of intended misbehavior is to be 
>prepared to respond immediately and directly to such behavior.
>
>The proposed action specifically gives the list managers / chairs 
>that necessary authority in the light of Mr. Morfin's exhibited and 
>asserted behavior.
>
>Yours,
>Joel M. Halpern
>
>

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:20:51 +0100

Jeroen Massar writes:

> doesn't apply to many folks (fortunately :)

The laws of other developed countries are frequently even more
restrictive when it comes to copyright.

> There is a much better thing
-------------->>8
> One gets a copy of this when signing up for the various lists.

That's not good enough.  Prospective list members must be presented
with the actual texts themselves and must agree to abide by them
_before_ they sign up.  And in some jurisdictions, even this may not
be enough (see "moral rights" and copyright).

> violation of copyright, better get sue'ing then, you might get rich.

Be careful what you wish for.

At one time, copyright lasted for only a few years.  And at one time,
patents could only be applied to machines.

> don't want to contribute then simply don't.

If I contribute to a mailing list that is archived, then my posts may
be archived against my will.

> (Who wonders that now I've quoted mr Atkielski if I am in violation of

People who haven't yet been sued tend to be very flippant about
intellectual property rights.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:24:45 +0100

Theodore Ts'o writes:

> out, it is trivially easy to claim rough consensus.

The problem with prior restraint, such as a ban, is that nobody ever
gets to respond to anything that doesn't toe the party line.  That's a
general problem with all censorship.

With filters, the intolerance of one person doesn't influence that of
others.  If he misses something and fails to respond to it because of
his filters, that's his own problem and his own fault.  The fact that
he might be careless in filtering or might choose to filter things
that other people don't is not a justification for forcing the whole
world to observe the same restrictions.

> So if everyone followed your advice (except for the poor wg chair,
> who has to judge consensus, so he/she would be forced to read
> through all of the dreck), it would be trivially easy for a group to
> get something past the wg; just have 2 or 3 people suggest something
> that would normally be controversial, insert the keyword "<Jefsey>
> somewhere in the text, and then when no one responds because they
> have all filtered out any text containing the word "Jefsey", the 2
> or 3 people can claim rough consensus and the change goes in.

See above. Laziness and intolerance are (or should be) problems of the
individual, not the group.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:36:18 +0100

> necessary authority in the light of Mr. Morfin's exhibited and asserted

Replace "Mr. Morfin" with "Dr. King" and see how it sounds.

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Jan 2006 05:18:11 -0000

>and agree to it. ...

Can I politely encourage people who are not lawyers to refrain from
expressing legal opinions here, or even worse stating legal opinions
as though they were facts?

I know just enough about copyright law to know that it is complex and
subtle, it is hard to say exactly what is a license and what is fair
use, and should a situation like this end up in court, the result will
depend on the detailed facts of the case including arguments about
what's the customary usage of messages sent to mailing lists and
whether people are aware of the physical locations of archives so they
know what law applies and so forth.  I have my opinions about what's
legitimate and what's not, but I am not under any illusions that a
judge would necessarily agree with me.

Besides, we already got the opinion of an actual lawyer for free.
What a deal.

R's,
John

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Jan 2006 05:18:45 -0000

>Replace "Mr. Morfin" with "Dr. King" and see how it sounds.

Have we just discovered a new corollary to Godwin's Law?

R's,
John

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Jan 2006 05:18:45 -0000

R's,
John

---

From: "Randy.Dunlap" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:53:19 -0800

> Have we just discovered a new corollary to Godwin's Law?

or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you_are_no_Jack_Kennedy

but all of this is so way off-topic, it's pitiful to see
this in/on/at IETF.

---
~Randy

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 08:06:45 +0200 (EET)

> Why don't you do that, then, so that he need not be banned just for

Why must each and every WG member be required to filter a person's 
postings?  Much more convenient to do so in one place.

Maybe you should try participating in a WG trying to be constructive 
sometime.  As far as I can see from quick googling and browsing 
various I-D/RFC data, you've never made any contribution to any IETF 
WG at all, just more or less heated and/or trollish messages at 
[email-masked].

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:30:30 +0100

> as though they were facts?

Why?  IP litigation is usually a roll of the dice, anyway.

> Besides, we already got the opinion of an actual lawyer for free.

See above.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:33:21 +0100

> postings?  Much more convenient to do so in one place.

Because each and every WG member is an individual, with his own ideas
of what he does or doesn't want to read, and imposing the same rules
upon everyone prevents members from making their own decisions.  It
also imposes the decisions of a small minority upon the majority.

> sometime.

Maybe.  Do they involve as much puerile bickering as this list?

> As far as I can see from quick googling and browsing

As far as I know, you're a complete stranger who resorts to personal
attacks from his very first post.  Maybe this list is just the place
for you, from what I've seen.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 07:52:57 -0800

Distracting from the topic yet again....

> general problem with all censorship.

I've seen this claim several times, and it still makes my head hurt to try 
to relate it to the real world.

If what is important is having an opinion stated, there is no barrier to 
having a friend (that is, a real person, not an alternate email account) 
say "I hear from X, and he says...." on your behalf.

Of course there are two cases where this is a problem:

- When, among the participants with posting rights on the list, there isn't 
a single person who is willing to pass on your opinion
- When you are so sure that your words are the perfect expression of what 
you are trying to say that you refuse to let anyone else touch them before 
posting

Since this is in the context of the concept of "censorship", there is a 
third category:

- where the act of passing on your opinion puts the other person in 
immediate danger of being refused posting rights

I haven't seen that as a realistic fear in the IETF.

                    Harald

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:46:02 +0100

> also imposes the decisions of a small minority upon the majority.

Here goes for a try... flame me off list if required.

As it is indeed quite controversial to 'block' people, maybe there can
be a solution that, though it will have overhead for listadmins, it will
help the process that the workinggroup is actually for in the first place.

In the several messages there have been brought up a number of solutions
 to the problem where one or multiple entities are (deliberately)
flooding/overloading the mailinglists of workinggroups and other places
with off-topic messages.

There seem to be a couple of solutions, amongst which:
 - Filtering based on source address at the receiver
 - Filtering based on keywords, which has really bad side-effects.
 - Blocking the sender at the mailinglist level.
 - 3683 PR for complete full blockage of posting rights.

The first is reasonably fine, as you don't see the message of the entity
that one finds not useful, but you might see responses of others thus
this is still intrusive and you still get those messages which you
wanted to filter out. The second option might filter out messages which
you did want to read. Both still will get these messages in the
mailinglist archive, even though there was a consensus that those
messages are unwanted.

The third and fourth option are pretty definitive, no more messages from
that entity, but this might be seen as silencing this persons freedom of
speech.

My proposal to solve this issue but keeping everybody happy:

Two mailinglists: <wg>@ietf.org + full.<wg>@ietf.org

full.<wg>@ is completely open, anybody can post anything they want
though hopefully on topic on the subject of the workinggroup and of
course based on the source address having a subscription *1
full.<wg>@ is subscribed to <wg>@ thus full.wg gets everything
preserving, at least parts, of the freedom of speech that is wanted and
for the people who want to read a lot of mail everyday.

Initially everybody who signs up to the <wg>@ list can post to it.
When the consensus on the list is that a member is not participating
correctly, ignoring warnings etc, like currently this member can be
banned from the list for a temporary amount of time. The member can
still voice his opinions on the <wg>@ list. This thus allows him to
voice his concerns to the members that do want to read them. Like the
current 3683 PR the ban can become effectively indefinitely for the main
list, while the poster is still and always allowed on full.<wg>@.

The big concern here is of course that one could say that if you get
booted out of the group that your voice won't be heard as they are not
reading the other list. This is of course true, but one can raise their
concerns on the full list, for instance Google won't differentiate
between them and there will always be folks who will listen to it and
forward these concerns when they have valid argumentation. By posting
'good' messages to the full.<wg>@ list a member can also demonstrate
that he is really willing to contribute instead of disrupt. One of the
nicest controversies is of course what to determine good and bad,
starwars as an example, how bad are the jedi and how good are the sith,
it completely depends on the side you are on, nothing else. That all
boils down to trust and other factors, any mailinglist admin could abuse
his position to set the sender of an address to silently discard, SMTP
can have a CC: in the header and mailman will not forward the message to
that person and various other nice tricks.

I hope the above might give a better point to discuss all this over
instead of seeing replies like "that is not good" "see above" and other
comments without effective constructive arguments.

Greets,
 Jeroen

*1 = to avoid the large amount of spam flowing to the various lists
which nicely get blocked because of subscription regulation.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 12:09:52 -0800

> for the people who want to read a lot of mail everyday.

In fact this has been implemented at least once that I know of - on the 
DNSO GA mailing list. The "full" version had relatively few subscribers.

You can find the archives of that experiment at 
<http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaarchives.html> - it's probably difficult to 
guess from the archives whether it was successful; better ask someone who 
was there at a time whether they think it worked.

Another variant is the ietf-censored version of the IETF list that I ran 
for a while, but left to others when becoming IETF chair - google claims 
that <http://vesuvio.ipv6.tilab.com/mailman/listinfo/ietf_censored> is a 
current page for it. Some people liked it; I don't know what filters are 
currently in place for it, but it doesn't seem to be working - archives 
have spam in them, but no IETF list traffic, so I guess it's not working.

                    Harald

---

From: "Dassa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 07:47:53 +1100

|> -----Original Message-----
|> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
|> On Behalf Of Harald Tveit Alvestrand
|> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 7:10 AM
|> To: Jeroen Massar; [email-masked]
|> Subject: Re: Proposal for keeping "free speech" but 
|> limitting the nuisance to the working group (Was: John Cowan 
|> supports 3683 PR-action against Jefsey Morfin)
|> 
|> 
|> 
|> --On 24. januar 2006 20:46 +0100 Jeroen Massar 
|> <[email-masked]> wrote:
|> 
|> > My proposal to solve this issue but keeping everybody happy:
|> >
|> > Two mailinglists: <wg>@ietf.org + full.<wg>@ietf.org
|> >
|> > full.<wg>@ is completely open, anybody can post anything they want 
|> > though hopefully on topic on the subject of the 
|> workinggroup and of 
|> > course based on the source address having a subscription 
|> *1 full.<wg>@ 
|> > is subscribed to <wg>@ thus full.wg gets everything preserving, at 
|> > least parts, of the freedom of speech that is wanted and for the 
|> > people who want to read a lot of mail everyday.
|> 
|> In fact this has been implemented at least once that I know 
|> of - on the DNSO GA mailing list. The "full" version had 
|> relatively few subscribers.
|> 
|> You can find the archives of that experiment at 
|> <http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaarchives.html> - it's probably 
|> difficult to guess from the archives whether it was 
|> successful; better ask someone who was there at a time 
|> whether they think it worked.
<snip>

I was a subscriber to both of the DNSO GA mailing lists and I do think the
experiment worked for the most part.  I've seen this a few times and it does
take a load of the main list but there are dangers in the "full" list becoming
a dumping ground for garbage.  Both lists need dedicated people to keep them
functioning correctly. It all boils down to how much traffic and noise
individuals can handle.  It appears there are large numbers of participants
who need to be sheltered a little more than others to retain their
participation, not a bad thing, just a fact.  Anything that can be done to
improve participation is a good thing.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch 

PS...I've known Jefsey online since those early DNSO and IDNO days and whilst
I don't always agree with him I respect his right to opinions.  I haven't
followed his postings to other lists but haven't seen anything here I object
to with regard to posting rights.  I wouldn't like to see a blanket ban placed
on his postings so a "full" list experiment would be a preference for me.

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 12:59:23 -0700

Are you going to write mailing list software an provide it
free of charge to implement all of this?

Jeroen Massar wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

-- 

Doug Royer                     | http://IntelliCal.com
-------------------------------|-----------------------------
               Intelligent Calendars

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:57:00 +0100

[aggregated message, the from's are in the cc, Rob see first reply]

Top-PS: Did folks see and read the following:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hartman-mailinglist-experiment-00.txt

Michael Thomas wrote:
[..]
> Perhaps we should take a lesson from TCP and set a receive window
> on IETF mailing lists in the face of conjestion. The sender is thus
> obligated to keep the transmission within the window, and as a side
> effect to consider the quality of the, um, quantity. Just this simple
> step would greatly limit (purposeful) DOS attacks and other death
> spirals. It also mitigates the "free speech" attacks by not throttling
> based on content (which is inherently contentious), but based on
> wg mailing list "bandwidth".

A couple of mailinglists already have a form of this, eg for the ipv6
working group mailinglist, see:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipv6/current/msg06123.html

This started somewhere around 18 Aug 2003 on request of the chairs.
ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng/ipng-mail-archive/ipng.200308
Note that the list was then still hosted at SUN.

Afaik, since this was introduced, people did start posting with higher
content quality and lower quantity. Maybe Rob Austein can provide the
numbers in a nice graph or some other details?

Steve Silverman wrote:
> It seems to me that limiting users to 3 messages / day (perhaps with a
> maximum number of bytes) would be a
> minimal impact on free speech but would limit the damage done by
> overly productive transmitters. This could be limited to users  who
> are nominated to a "limit" list by many users.

Limiting to less than 3 per day would be the same as suspending for X
hours. Next to that it might also inhibit one from fixing a statement,
though of course one should re-read their post before posting.

> How difficult this
> would be to implement on the message exploders is another question.

Mailman is python and it should not be to difficult to add per-poster
counters, but this would also require that the secretariat applies those
patches and then hope that these changes are really working perfectly
well. A lot of testing would be required. Many people depend on the list
software, breaking it is not something that will be taken lightly ;)
Also avoiding such counters can be done easily by using multiple
subscriptions, but indeed that would be obvious.

> free of charge to implement all of this?

That already exists, it is called Mailman, which is what at least
@ietf.org uses and several of the lists not hosted here also.
Note the "X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5" header in every post.

The existing lists are already there, just add an extra 'full' list,
subscribe the mainlist to the full list, which is quite normal with
umbrella lists, and presto. Now when somebody gets suspended from the
mainlist, the WG Chair can then ask the listadmin to move the
subscription of the to be suspended person from the mainlist to the
alternate list. Thus add on full, remove from main.

The technical part is the very easy part here. It is politics and maybe
more over ethnics and some other factors which are the hard parts.

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
[..full/main list..]
> In fact this has been implemented at least once that I know of - on
> the DNSO GA mailing list. The "full" version had relatively few
> subscribers.

Only suspended folks or "suspended-lovers" (AmaViS style) would indeed
be interested in following it. To avoid this we could, at first setup
the full list to contain all the members of

The DNSO list also has a long 'rules of order' file:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2000.GA-ga-rules-v0.4.html

> Another variant is the ietf-censored version of the IETF list that I
> ran for a while, but left to others when becoming IETF chair - google
> claims that
> <http://vesuvio.ipv6.tilab.com/mailman/listinfo/ietf_censored>
> is a current page for it.

I guess the main problem with this list is that the WG Chair doesn't
have (much) influence on it. It is neither an official list. Also it is
not clear who has been censored or not, which indeed means censoring,
while IMHO we still want to allow people to voice their opinions and not
simply discard them. The naming 'censored' is thus quite correct for
this list but I that is also something that the IETF should steer clear
from with a wide angle.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch wrote:
> <snip>
>
> I was a subscriber to both of the DNSO GA mailing lists and I do think
> the experiment worked for the most part.

As the list isn't active any more it might be useful to get input from
the members of the list that where then participating. Of course from
both the "I want to be on the main" and "on the full" lists. Off-list
replies for 'counting' are welcome.

> I've seen this a few times [..] Anything that can be done to improve
> participation is a good thing.

Exactly my opinion.

> PS...I've known Jefsey online since those early DNSO and IDNO days
> and whilst I don't always agree with him I respect his right to
> opinions.  I haven't followed his postings to other lists but haven't
> seen anything here I object to with regard to posting rights.
> I wouldn't like to see a blanket ban placed on his postings so a
> "full" list experiment would be a preference for me.

I didn't follow the lists where the real trouble was caused, but from
the comments I read and the reasoning behind them though I would, with a
main/full construct, move him to the full list so that he can still
voice his opinions but without undermining the rest of the process as I
do have a big problem with the fact that my mailbox, even though nicely
sorted, is getting flooded by a lot of policy mails and repeated
arguments instead of technical items.

Greets,
 Jeroen

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 05:10:12 +0100

Jeroen Massar writes:

> hours.

They would both be the same only if they were carried out in the same
way.

If either method is applied to specific users, it's still just
arbitrary censorship.  If it is applied equally to everyone by a
robot, then it's fair.

> Next to that it might also inhibit one from fixing a statement,

Life is tough.  As long as the same restrictions apply to _everyone_,
no problem.

> subscriptions, but indeed that would be obvious.

Excuses, excuses.  The urge to manually and subjectively _censor_ is
irresistibly strong, is it not?

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:05:20 +0100

Jeroen,

A practice I used when I was diffserv chair and we had quite a lot
of off-topic postings was to create a second list, diffserv-interest
(which still exists BTW). The rule for [email-masked] was "must
be relevant to a chartered work item" and the rule for diffserv-interest
was "must be relevant to diffserv technology."

This worked well, with active intervention by the chair to divert
off-topic threads to the -interest list.  It doesn't raise any
issues for the standards process, which states that all consensus
points are settled on the WG mailing list. People only interested
in the standards work simply ignored the -interest list.

This is easy; any WG chair can do it today.

    Brian

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:21:35 +0900

> was "must be relevant to diffserv technology."

Though I never participated in diffserv WG activities, which was
chartered wrongly from the beginning, your chairing strategy
explains why the result of the WG is technically meaningless.

> People only interested

They ignored the -interest list and the technology.

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:47:57 +0100

Masataka Ohta wrote:
> chartered wrongly from the beginning,

As a matter of fact, I believe that the insistence of the ADs
involved on a very tightly drawn charter was the main reason that
the WG succeeded.

> your chairing strategy

You mean the care we took to consider dissenting opinions before
reaching rough consensus? Or something else?

> explains why the result of the WG is technically meaningless.

That is a strange statement given the actual facts of implementation
and deployment.

> They ignored the -interest list and the technology.

Are you referring to the many vendors that implemented
it, or the many enterprises that have deployed it?

     Brian

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:47:58 +0900

> involved on a very tightly drawn charter was the main reason that

As your measure of success is not in technology but in progressing
standardization process, you say the WG succeeded.

> it, or the many enterprises that have deployed it?

I'm referring to relatively small number of enterprises that
have depoyed it.

						Masataka Ohta