Subject: Drafts that can't be serious

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 08:04:48 -0700

>From "New and Revived Drafts" this morning:

draft-pkx-infobirdiconswww-04, "Information as a bird with wings that
flies and hits the user device screen as Icons":

"No one has contacted me regarding this project and i see the same
criminal hands of repulsives in palakkad that has attacked me in Jan
2010 and Oct 2013, criminal doctors and their businesses that need to be
stopped and those who attacked me executed. They have diagnosed me as a
schizophrenic to steal and expend my wealth and they need to be executed
for attacking me.I am a healthy heterosexual unable to live with a woman
since 2001 because of cybercrime because money send to me is stolen"

draft-emaillogger-02, "Email provider should provide email owner an
audit log":

"Its a shame that these are not implemented a group trying to murder me
or make me a disabled and preventing me from leading my life in
California. Anyone can own this and use their resources to implement
these, they can just email me. As i am writing this out of my own
requirement, i demand my personal wealth not used to maintain ietf.org
or to send emails. Its my impression that they are self sufficient. I
would work on these when i have my money in my bank at my speed"

Is there a filter that the IETF can apply to defer the posting of drafts
like this until the next April 1?

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸

---

From: James Woodyatt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 09:29:13 -0700

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 8:04 AM, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>
> Is there a filter that the IETF can apply to defer the posting of
> drafts like this until the next April 1?
>

I hope IETF resists any temptations to apply such a filter.

The Internet Draft queue is the slush pile of the IETF publication process.
It's important that slush arrive in the queue without filters of any kind,
automated or not. I believe reading slush entails suspending prejudice to
the extent possible and assuming that any draft entering the queue was
submitted by earnest authors in all due seriousness.

-- 
james woodyatt <[email-masked]>
Nest Labs, Communications Engineering

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:47:02 -0400

--On Monday, April 20, 2015 08:04 -0700 Doug Ewell
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> Is there a filter that the IETF can apply to defer the posting
> of drafts like this until the next April 1?

Doug,

There are, AFAICT, three options other than trying to reason
with the party involved in off list notes (something that I have
tried and assume others have too).

(1) Realize that the ability to post I-Ds and even advertise
them to the IETF list are, inevitably, an attractive nuisance
for some people.   If so, the best way to deal with such
postings may be to ignore them entirely and certainly not to
quote from them or start discussion threads about them because
responding may encourage more such behavior.

(2) Try to enforce the naming conventions for I-Ds a bit, per
recent discussion on this list.  I'm personally not in favor of
going very far in that direction, but it seems to me that two
fairly simple things would have potential for improving things
considerably: (i) If the second component of the proposed name
of an I-D is not "ietf" or some other known organizational
string, have the posting tool check that component against
author surnames; if it does not match one of those, force manual
postings and a corresponding sanity check.  I wouldn't make a
big deal of the latter -- most of the value would come from
having a rule that would amount to "either pick an obvious name
or expect a delay in posting".  Forcing more consistent and
predictable naming would make it easier, on an individual basis,
to ignore anyone with a perceived history of spurious postings
without having to make a formal IETF determination or restrict
the important "anyone may post an I-D" principle.

(3) I suppose the PR-action mechanism could be extended and used
to restrict individual I-D postings or at least postings about
such I-Ds and maybe announcements of them, but I hope we don't
need to go there, if only because of the huge amount of
community resources discussion of such postings consume.

    john

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 08:53:56 -0800

On 4/20/15 8:29 AM, James Woodyatt wrote:
> The Internet Draft queue is the slush pile of the IETF publication
> process. It's important that slush arrive in the queue without filters
> of any kind, automated or not. I believe reading slush entails
> suspending prejudice to the extent possible and assuming that any draft
> entering the queue was submitted by earnest authors in all due seriousness.

Hear, hear.

Melinda

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 13:08:45 -0400

--On Monday, April 20, 2015 08:53 -0800 Melinda Shore
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> The Internet Draft queue is the slush pile of the IETF
>> publication process. It's important that slush arrive in the
>> queue without filters of any kind, automated or not. I
>> believe reading slush entails suspending prejudice to the
>> extent possible and assuming that any draft entering the
>> queue was submitted by earnest authors in all due seriousness.
> 
> Hear, hear.

I agree completely and note that I did not suggest any filtering
based on content, only on naming and, using the concepts of our
PR mechanisms, possibly on persistent disrupters.  For exactly
the "slush pile" reasoning, I think the standard of disruption
required to start blocking I-D postings should be extremely
high.  

However, it was pointed out to me in an offlist note that we
also should be able to take already-posted drafts down if they
are libelous, indecent, infringe copyrights or disclose trade
secrets, or represent harassing behavior.  In a few cases, we
might even be legally required to do so.  Our procedures for
doing that have never been clear (at least to me).  Maybe some
small effort there is justified.  If procedures designed for
other purposes happened to eliminate drafts that would require
take-down for those types of reasons before they were posted, I
don't think anyone should react negatively to that.

    john

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 10:11:59 -0700

> don't think anyone should react negatively to that.

https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/removal-of-an-internet-draft.html

---

From: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 13:30:44 -0400 (EDT)

> required to start blocking I-D postings should be extremely

Actually, this might be the start of a real problem. The ietf.org
has a great page rank value. Getting your domain into a url into
a draft on the IETF site has value. In this case, I noticed two
URLs that we would never put in real drafts, things to personal
domains where real authors would use "example.com". That's a very
simple objective rule that can be enforced. If we don't, we might
end up attracting spammers in attempts to bring up their page
ranking on search engines.

> don't think anyone should react negatively to that.

Yup, as long as the rules are purely technical or procedural and
not based on content.

Paul

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Apr 2015 19:59:31 -0000

>ranking on search engines.

I would strongly suggest not making up new rules to solve problems
that do not currently exist and probably never will.  Two I-D's from
someone who doesn't understand the IETF does not make a crisis, and
there are much easier ways to do SEO gaming than to write fake drafts.

I have always found the vast majority of drafts that go by aren't
interesting to me because they're in areas I don't work in and don't
understand very well.  Skipping a few more because they're incoherent
isn't a problem.

On the other hand, a little grepping of the I-D directory finds 30
drafts with references to one of my personal domains, most in drafts I
did not write, and all in drafts that people would consider to be
serious.  I don't mind, but I expect your new robot might.

R's,
John

---

From: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 16:03:57 -0400

Good, contact those authors and tell them to use example.* instead

Sent from my iPhone

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 08:13:08 +1200

On 21/04/2015 05:11, joel jaeggli wrote:
...
> https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/removal-of-an-internet-draft.html

Exactly. We could always turn that into a BCP I suppose, but why bother,
given that the Note Well says "A participant in any IETF activity is deemed
to accept all IETF rules of process, as documented in Best Current Practices
RFCs and IESG Statements."

We've always had a low rate of nonsensical I-Ds and I have generally
found the delete button very effective. These two are a lot less annoying
than a famous series from one author between 1999 and 2007. I think it's
a price worth paying in support of our open process.

    Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 14:08:20 -0700

> Exactly. We could always turn that into a BCP I suppose, 

Separate from the usual question of the IESG setting IETF policy by
fiat, without explicitly developing IETF rough consensus, there's the
small matter of finding that policy about the handling of Internet Drafts.

A visitor to the ietf site, is not likely to wander through pages until
they find this policy.  Rather, I'd expect anyone who is curious about
the draft 'series' to look at:

   ietf.org  ->  "Internet Drafts" <http://www.ietf.org/id-info/

There, the only the text they will see on removal is:

   "Internet-Drafts have no formal status, and are subject to change or
removal at any time;"

If the IESG statement is, in fact, IETF policy on Internet Draft
removal, it probably should be cited on that page.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Warren Kumari <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 18:01:02 -0400

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 5:08 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> they find this policy.

Yup - new visitors to the IETF also seem to not quite understand what
an ID is - they seem to think that, because something is published as
an Internet Draft, and is on the IETF site it means that somehow the
IETF has vetted it or approves of it.

This has led to multiple instances where someone (often a reporter)
will find an ID and then claim that "the IETF believes" or "the IETF
thinks" $whatever is in the draft[0]. The last time this happened I
got fed up and wrote
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wkumari-not-a-draft-06

> Rather, I'd expect anyone who is curious about

Yup, and perhaps some text should be added to that page explaining
that anyone can put whatever ravings they want to into an ID - until
it is adopted by a WG, or sponsored, or accepted by the ISE, or <other
interesting paths> it has no standing?

W
[0]: I'm sure that this is often intentional, to increase readership...

-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 15:32:30 -0700

> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wkumari-not-a-draft-06

Warren,

While related, I think that's a different issue, not unlike the the "Not
all RFCs are Standards".  The main I-D page already contains an explicit
statement about non-status.  So the problem you cite concerns careless
reading.

I suppose one could argue that the phrase "working documents of the
IETF" could encourage a misunderstanding, in spite of the explicit text
2 paragraphs down.  I suppose that first text could be softened a bit,
to something like:

   Internet-Drafts are working documents with no formal status.  Some of
these documents are in development through the IETF, its areas and its
working groups and might, eventually, reach completion.

I doubt that will have much effect, but it might help a little.

Still, failure to read the plain language on that page is different from
failing to find a policy statement that is buried in an obscure place.

d/

---

From: Matt Mathis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 16:40:15 -0700

It could be:

Internet Drafts are documents that have been submitted to the IETF for
consideration.   They might reflect partial IETF consensus.   They may also
be in complete opposition to IETF consensus.   The only requirement for
publishing an I-D through the IETF process it that it bears copyright and
IPR notices, consistent with IETF rules.   It is inappropriate to assert
that I-Ds are a product of the IETF or to cite them in any way except "as
work in progress."

Thanks,
--MM--
The best way to predict the future is to create it.  - Alan Kay

Privacy matters!  We know from recent events that people are using our
services to speak in defiance of unjust governments.   We treat privacy and
security as matters of life and death, because for some users, they are.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 19:49:15 -0400

+1 to David's comments.

One additional observation.  I've read, and tried working with,
the IESG statement before this.  IMO, and based on discussions
with Counsel and a DMCA contributor long enough ago that I was
concerned about personal liability, the statement almost
certainly needs work, if only because there are scenarios where
making the sole mechanism for determining whether an I-D should
be taken down a matter of IESG consensus discretion may be
inappropriate.  Consider, without getting into lawyer-land by
speculating on effects, the following scenarios:

(1) The IETF receives a DMCA takedown notice that alleges a
particular I-D contains serious copyright violations.  The
statement, if taken seriously, does not permit the IAD or
Secretariat to remove the I-D: the IESG must be consulted and
reach consensus.

(2) Noting that the author of a draft cannot have it removed
except by asking the IESG and hoping that their consensus is to
go along with the request, suppose it is discovered that an I-D
accidentally disclosed important trade secret material and the
company involved claims that it is more damaged with each day
the material is available.

(3) An I-Ds is posted that makes personal and suggestive
allegations about some other IETF participant that the latter
considers harassment or worse.  Do the new harassment
prevention/ mitigation mechanisms allow taking such a draft down
or does the ombudteam (or the author) have to politely ask the
IESG to make a decision on the subject and hope they go along?

(4) Does (3) change at all if "allegations" are replaced by
potentially defamatory or libelous statements.

I note that we have a variety of disclaimers and required author
assertions of responsibility for what is posted.  I have no
reason to believe they are in any way inadequate to protect the
IETF from problems associated with initial posting.  The
questions arise as to whether the takedown mechanisms or the
time they are likely to take are appropriate given the above
scenarios or others.

   john

--On Monday, April 20, 2015 14:08 -0700 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Separate from the usual question of the IESG setting IETF
> policy by fiat, without explicitly developing IETF rough
> consensus, there's the small matter of finding that policy
> about the handling of Internet Drafts.
> 
> A visitor to the ietf site, is not likely to wander through
> pages until they find this policy.  Rather, I'd expect anyone
> who is curious about the draft 'series' to look at:
> 
>    "Internet-Drafts have no formal status, and are subject to
> change or removal at any time;"
> 
> If the IESG statement is, in fact, IETF policy on Internet
> Draft removal, it probably should be cited on that page.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:40:47 +0900

i suggest we focus on producing good, well-engineered, internet drafts.
being an internet police person is boring; and they do not even let you
use guns.

randy

---

From: manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 20:09:39 -0700

> being an internet police person is boring; and they do not even let you

	or not.  the levels of procedural entanglement are increasing.  its very hard 
	to do real work in this context.

manning
[email-masked]
PO Box 12317
Marina del Rey, CA 90295
310.322.8102

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 21:17:18 -0700

> consideration.   They might reflect partial IETF consensus.   They may
> also be in complete opposition to IETF consensus.   The only requirement
> for publishing an I-D through the IETF process it that it bears
> copyright and IPR notices, consistent with IETF rules.   It is
> inappropriate to assert that I-Ds are a product of the IETF or to cite
> them in any way except "as work in progress."  

So, I think the above text goes a bit far, but it has some points that
might be worth incorporating, in the realm of disclaimers.

Perhaps:

The Internet-Draft circulation mechanism is open for anyone issuing
working documents; the documents have no formal status.  Some of these
documents are in development through the IETF, its areas or its working
groups, while others are not sponsored by the IETF and might be entirely
unrelated to its efforts.  In particular, Internet-Drafts are NOT
products of the IETF and should only be cited as "work in progress".

d/

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 01:02:18 -0500

On 4/20/15 6:49 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
>> policy by fiat without explicitly developing IETF rough
>> consensus...

I think that's a bit inflammatory and accusatory, and in this case 
incorrect. The IESG proposed this publicly before publishing it, and a 
3-week long community discussion took place, in which many of the 
present discussants took part:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?qdr=c&q=subject%3A(Removal+of+an+Internet-Draft)&as=1&so=date

The policy was not set by the IESG by fiat, but rather resulted from 
community deliberations. Now, there wasn't a *formal* call for 
consensus, but even so, I can't find any mention in that discussion of 
anyone saying, "This needs to be a formal consensus of the IETF, 
documented as a BCP, not just an IESG statement" or anything like that. 
Perhaps people don't feel that they can do that, or ought to in the face 
of a proposal from the IESG, but I have a hard time believing that none 
of the senior participants on this list felt that they could. Either 
way, I think accusing the IESG of "setting policy by fiat" in this case 
is wrong.

>> Draft removal, it probably should be cited on that page.

Agreed.

> speculating on effects, the following scenarios:

This was discussed publicly, and by the IESG, when this topic came up. 
Without diving into the detail of all 200 of the IETF list messages and 
minutes of IESG discussions, my memory is that we thought a bad idea to 
put the secretariat or the IAD in the position of making a legal (or 
other potentially controversial) call to remove something from the 
public archive without the IESG giving an "OK". For example, even if the 
IETF received a legal notice requiring removal of a draft from the 
public archive, where the secretariat or IAD might be inclined to simply 
take the action, the IESG might ask the IAD to inquire about the 
possibility of filing a legal challenge before undertaking the action.

But I can't tell from your list whether your concern is simply about the 
potential delay in having the IESG coming to consensus, or rather the 
possibility that the IESG goes nuts and doesn't listen to legal advice 
when it is asked for its OK. While it's possible for the latter to 
happen I suppose, it's not something I think we need really to account for.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 11:01:47 +0200

Note that one reason for publishing IESG statements rather than BCPs is
that the IESG statement reflects IESG consensus, not IETF consensus, and
can be changed any time the IESG consensus changes.

Presumably, this is a quicker process than determining that IETF
consensus has changed (and also easier to document - unlike IETF
participants, we know the names of all the IESG members).

If the IESG becomes aware that (for instance) harassment in I-D text has
just become a serious problem, and as a result, the ombudsperson should
be given the power to take down I-Ds without consulting the IESG, it can
do that.

So far, I don't think we know of a present problem that indicates that
we need a change to this process, but if required, the IESG can Just Do It.

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:33:20 -0400

>>>>> "Pete" == Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> writes:

    Pete> case incorrect. The IESG proposed this publicly before
    Pete> publishing it, and a 3-week long community discussion took
    Pete> place, in which many of the present discussants took part:

    Pete> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?qdr=c&q=subject%3A(Removal+of+an+Internet-Draft)&as=1&so=date

    Pete> The policy was not set by the IESG by fiat, but rather
    Pete> resulted from community deliberations. Now, there wasn't a
    Pete> *formal* call for consensus, but even so, I can't find any
    Pete> mention in that discussion of anyone saying, "This needs to be
    Pete> a formal consensus of the IETF, documented as a BCP, not just
    Pete> an IESG statement" or anything like that. Perhaps people don't
    Pete> feel that they can do that, or ought to in the face of a
    Pete> proposal from the IESG, but I have a hard time believing that
    Pete> none of the senior participants on this list felt that they
    Pete> could. Either way, I think accusing the IESG of "setting
    Pete> policy by fiat" in this case is wrong.

I don't remember whether I participated in that discussion, but I recall
thinking at the time, "Ah, the IESG is doing its job, this looks fine."
This seems exactly like the sort of place where having the IESG set
policy is reasonable.  We don't want this to be a BCP, both because it's
unneeded and because it's not refined enough to cover all the corner
cases.  We would not want a formal BCP revision process if we had left
out a case where urgent action was required for legal reasons.

Moreover, this is a case where it seems like this is clearly within the
sorts of things the IESG is supposed to consider, they have a good
handle on the situation, and if they get it wrong, we can give feedback
or produce a BCP.

I think the process followed in approaching that statement was very
appropriate.

---

From: Carlos Vera Quintana <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:06:53 -0500

This should be made by hand, I guess, due to nature and policy of discussions here.

Carlos Vera Quintana
0988141143
Sígueme @cveraq

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 00:15:57 +0200

> like this until the next April 1?

Usually most volunteering organisations have filters for their incoming
information (filtering information but not filtering participation), the
best practice in communication is to have many techniques to improve IETF's
information system. All participants are equal but all information are not.

AB

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 22:36:21 +0000

All participants are not equal, as you have repeatedly demonstrated...
________________________________
From: ietf <[email-masked]> on behalf of Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, 22 April 2015 8:15:57 AM
To: Doug Ewell
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Drafts that can't be serious

Usually most volunteering organisations have filters for their incoming information (filtering information but not filtering participation), the best practice in communication is to have many techniques to improve IETF's information system. All participants are equal but all information are not.

AB

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:14:36 -0700

Loyd please refrain.

Thank you
joel

On 4/21/15 3:36 PM, [email-masked] wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* ietf <[email-masked]> on behalf of Abdussalam Baryun
> <[email-masked]>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 22 April 2015 8:15:57 AM
> *To:* Doug Ewell
> *Cc:* [email-masked]
> *Subject:* Re: Drafts that can't be serious
>  
> 
> 
> best practice in communication is to have many techniques to improve
> IETF's information system. All participants are equal but all
> information are not. 
> 
> AB

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 10:35:24 +0300

First, of course we allow everybody to post drafts. I agree with
James’ characterisation of how we approach the various
proposals.

On the policy being easy to find, and on us saying somewhere
that IDs are just the opinions of the authors unless adopted
by the IETF in some fashion: I have requested a change in
the ID page to provide that information.

I’m not sure we have other things do though. I’m sensitive
to comments about the content of the policy, but I’ll note
that we don’t do this often. In fact I cannot remember we
have ever done this, but it could be that it is just a too
early morning for me right now. I’ll also note that the
policy lets us handle an exceptional situation when
we come to it by taking it to the steering group. And
making a judgment call on what needs to happen.
In an emergency we can make a quick decision in
IESG. So unless I hear something compelling,
I’m going to assume that we all have other more
urgent things to do in taking the Internet technology
forward :-)

Jari