Subject: Extending the Dean Anderson PR-action to lists on tools.ietf.org

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:30:13 +0200

Hi,

As a service to the community, there are two sets of email address alias
lists maintaned on tools.ietf.org:

One list provides aliases for the WG chairs of all active working groups
and also of chairs of working groups which have been closed recently, and
also equivalent aliases for working group ADs, patterned so:
<wg-acronym>[email-masked] and <wg-acronym>[email-masked].

Another list provides aliases for draft authors, so that they can be
reached through aliases following the pattern <draft-name>@tools.ietf.org.

The service is described briefly on http://tools.ietf.org/ under the 
"Share and Communicate" heading.

As these alias lists are effective within the ietf.org domain, the relevant
IETF policies on spam and posting-rights actions must be considered to apply
to them, as they do to ietf mailing lists in general.

As maintainer of these lists, I, Henrik Levkowetz, hereby let it be known
that I have chosen to extend the posting rights action against Dean Anderson
(see http://www4.ietf.org/iesg/pr-action.html) to also apply to these lists,
according to the provisions for posting rights actions described on the above
referenced web page and the references it mentions.

Regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:32:17 -0600

Uh, for what its' worth, I am on a ton of these lists (and also the [email-masked] 
  lists). I have not received any email from Dean on these list that I  
found to be a problem. While I am not a fan of the Dean's belief that  
he should subscribe me, without my consent, to ietf-honest, I really  
don't understand why Dean should be blocked from [email-masked].

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:48:16 -0600

On Apr 17, 2009, at 9:32 AM, Samuel Weiler wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Cullen Jennings wrote:
>
> > I really don't understand why Dean should be blocked from
> > [email-masked].
>
> Dean is the subject of a PR Action; Henrik needs no other reason to
> apply the blocking and, if there is a reason or triggering event
> (which seems likely), he needn't disclose it to Dean or to this list.
>
> In the general case, I also see no harm in the blocking: those aliases
> are for convenience, and it's easy to expand them using public
> sources.  Blocking their use doesn't meaingfully hamper IETF
> participation.
>
> -- Sam
>

Sam, not disagreeing with anything you are saying here but none of  
this helps me understand why Dean should be blocked. [Note, I'm not  
saying this blocking is right or wrong, just that I don't understand  
why]. Should someone who is subject of a PR action just be  
automatically blocked from all IETF lists?

---

From: Jeroen Massar <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:53:38 +0200

Cullen Jennings wrote:
[..]
> Sam, not disagreeing with anything you are saying here but none of this
> helps me understand why Dean should be blocked. [Note, I'm not saying
> this blocking is right or wrong, just that I don't understand why].
> Should someone who is subject of a PR action just be automatically
> blocked from all IETF lists?

With all the nonsense caused by this person with his 'dishonest' lists,
I would say YES.

I am very delighted that Henrik took those actions and fully support
that decision in light of the PR action and all the abusive nonsense
that the individual is causing.

Greets,
 Jeroen
  (who fortunately is able to configure all his MX's to nicely reject
   mail from that individual and all his silly mailinglists, to avoid
   having to read the nonsense, and worse, get mail doubly which
   completely messes up message sorting and thus causes a lot of work,
   and there is enough of that already)

---

From: Samuel Weiler <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:32:56 -0400 (EDT)

-- Sam

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:23:58 -0400

>>>>> "Cullen" == Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]> writes:
    >> As these alias lists are effective within the ietf.org domain,
    >> the relevant IETF policies on spam and posting-rights actions
    >> must be considered to apply to them, as they do to ietf mailing
    >> lists in general.

I find the above statement quite questionable.
These addresses reach individuals in specific roles, not working groups.

Chairs have obligations to be responsive to questions/comments about
their WGs.  ADs have very strong obligations to be avaibale for
official communications.

While there might be some level beyond which it is necessary to take
action--for example, in order to protect operational functionality of
the ietf servers--it seems that we should be more permissive and less
willing to drop mail.

In addition, the IETF policies on spam control clearly do not apply to
closed lists.  Thes policies assume an archive that posters can check
in order to see if their postings went through.  If you are going to
apply spam policies to these aliases as if they are mailing lists,
then please point me at the public archives you set up for these
aliases so I can see if my postings make it.

Please note that I'm not commenting on whether dropping Dean from the
tools.ietf.org aliases is a good idea or not.  I think your reasoning
for why you have the authority to do so and for why it is reasonable
is completely bogus.  There may be other reasoning that is more
reasonable.

I feel quite strongly about this; let's see if we can come to some
sort of agreement and avoid an appeal.

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:59:10 -0700

> blocked from all IETF lists?

This strikes me as the essential question.

My own opinion is 'yes'.

A PR action is rare and serious and it comes about as a result of the person's 
significant misbehavior.  The action is a community shunning, to protect the 
community.  I do not see any benefit in protecting only part of the community.

If someone's behavior descends (rather than rises) to a point of needing a PR 
action then, really, that's an assessment that we are (all) better off keeping 
them away from us.  It doesn't make sense to keep them away from us only for one 
room of our community meeting spaces.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:17:55 -0700

Hi Henrik,

> "Share and Communicate" heading.

First, I want to say that this is a great service. I do a fair number of
reviews and I use these aliases all the time... It's really become a
critical part of our infrastructure.

> referenced web page and the references it mentions.

While this may be technically within the limits of 3683, I don't think
it comports well with the spirit of the document. To recap, the effect
of a PR-Action is that:

   o  those identified on the PR-action have their posting rights to
      that IETF mailing list removed; and,

   o  maintainers of any IETF mailing list may, at their discretion,
      also remove posting rights to that IETF mailing list.

From the rest of the context of the document, I think it's reasonably
clear that the purpose of allowing maintainers of other mailing lists
to remove posting rights is to allow them to quickly respond to
disruptive behavior *on those lists*. In the case of WG or other
discussion lists, this is a reasonably good fit: the
maintainer of the list is generally the chair and so is responsible
for monitoring and facilitating discussion and is well position
to determine whether the subject of a PR action is disruptive.

However, this is not really the case for these lists, which are just
expanders for the relevant chairs, ADs, or draft authors. While you
may be maintaining the list in a technical sense, the recipients are
the ones who monitor the communication and are in a position to
determine whether it's disruptive or not. I don't think it fits well
with the intent of 3683 to have a global decision to be taken on all
these services by someone who is not involved in the discussion,
regardless of whether those involved have complained. I'm not saying
that PR Actions can't be extended to these aliases (though I think
that given Sam's comments it's an open question and given the ease of
expanding them directly it seems rather pointless) but in my opinion
at minimum it should be upon request of the recipients, not the
decision of a global maintainer.

Regardless of what the IETF's global policy is and without taking a
position on Dean Anderson's postings in general, I am not aware of him
having abused these services to send any inappropriate mail to me.
I therefore see no good reason to block what is otherwise a useful
communication channel. Accordingly, I hereby request that you unblock
his posting privileges to any and all of the above mentioned aliases
that send mail to me.

Best,
-Ekr

---

From: "Lawrence Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:37:02 -0700

> his posting privileges to any and all of the above mentioned aliases

+1 and a similar request from me. 

I'm not generally in favor of restrictions on speech as long as I remain
free not to listen. In that respect, Dean Anderson has never abused his
freedom to speak to me.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Eric Rescorla
> Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 10:18 AM
> To: Henrik Levkowetz
> Cc: IETF Discussion; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Extending the Dean Anderson PR-action to lists on
> tools.ietf.org
> 
> 
> Hi Henrik,
> 
> Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:48:36 -0400

>to determine whether the subject of a PR action is disruptive.

There have been complaints from recipients of one or more of the mail 
lists on tools.ietf.org that received Dean's messages.  Henrik is 
balancing the time it would take for him to handle such complaints 
one-by-one.  The point of the RFC 3683 as expressed in the second 
bullet above is to prevent disruptive behavior from becoming a denial 
of service attack.  So in that aspect, I think Henrik has made a 
reasonable choice.  I'd rather Henrik spend his time on other cool 
tools, not handling mail list complaints.

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:57:58 -0400

>sort of agreement and avoid an appeal.

If these mail lists were the only convenient way to reach these 
individuals, I might agree with your reasoning. That is not the case.

These actions do not prevent Dean from communicating with Document 
Authors, WG Chairs or ADs.  The direct mail addresses for these 
individuals are available in the documents that they write, in the WG 
charters, and on the IESG web pages, respectively.

These tools.ietf.org mail lists were created by a volunteer to aid 
the community.  By Henrik's own statements, dealing with the 
complaints would have consumed too much time.  I'd hate for Henrik to 
discontinue this service over this issue.  That seems to be a real 
denial of service to us all.

Russ

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:21:47 -0700

Russ Housley wrote:
>   I'd rather Henrik spend his time on other cool tools, not 
> handling mail list complaints.

+1

people who do the/our work are not infinite, free resources.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:35:02 -0400

> This strikes me as the essential question.

Well, it's not that it ought to be automatic; it's that the maintainer
of the list in question may, at its discretion, revoke such rights
once a PR-action is underway.  This is explicitly stated in RFC 3683.

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:41:40 -0400

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 01:48:36PM -0400, Russ Housley wrote:
> one-by-one.  

I think this is right on, and I support the action.  (And note that,
even though Dean regularly sends me mail full of fallacious arguments,
what I regard as paranoid rants, and thinly-veiled threats, I still
accept his mail directly if it has anything at all to do with the WG I
co-chair.  I just see no reason why anyone else ought to have to
accept mail from him, and that includes Henrik on machines he runs.)

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:49:47 -0400

> having abused these services to send any inappropriate mail to me.

I think the situation with Dean is somewhat askew of
what's covered in 3683, since the issue here isn't
that he's sending abusive mail or spam (per se) or
mail that's inherently objectionable.  It's that he's
subscribing people who post to the IETF mailing list
to his own mailing list, and I'm not sure that the
problem with doing so is that it generates a "welcome"
message.  That is to say, it's not the email that's
being sent that's the issue (as nearly as I can tell
there's zero traffic on Dean's mailing lists), it's
that he's subscribing people without their permission
in the first place and that he's not letting some
unsubscribe in the second.

I'll take the liberty of assuming that there's general
agreement that this is not okay, and the issue under
discussion is how to respond.  In terms of response
there are two issues: 1) preventative steps, and 2)
punitive steps.  I'm not sure there are steps that can
be taken to prevent someone from doing this without
losing a significant degree of openness, and I think
it's obvious that that's too high a price to pay.
As for punishment, I'm just not sure.  There have
been a few PR actions against Anderson so far and he
doesn't seem to be behaving any better, so whatever
punitive actions that have been taken seem to have
been ineffective.

Melinda

---

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:43:25 -0400

> unsubscribe in the second.

Actually, there has been some traffic on at least some of Dean's
mailing list.  Unfortunately, not all of it has come from Dean, but
over time most people have learned not to reply to Dean, so it's not
that bad.

> punitive actions that have been taken seem to have

The question I would ask is whether Dean has started subscribing AD's,
WG chairs, etc. using the aliases provided by Henrik.  I had assumed
that was the cause of the complaints (since it would be a way for Dean
to bypass people's attempt to filter his mails by blacklisting any
e-mail originating from his mailing list server --- since he's not
preventing them from unsubscribing any other way).  If this the case,
allowing Herik providing filtering service to prevent incoming SMTP
traffic from Dean's mailing list server would in fact be considered by
some to be (a) a preventative step, and (b) might considered by some a
real service to the community.

					- Ted

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:48:29 -0700

At Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:43:25 -0400,
Theodore Tso wrote:
> WG chairs, etc. using the aliases provided by Henrik.  

As far as I know, the answer to this is "no".

-Ekr

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:40:57 +1200

On 2009-04-18 05:57, Russ Housley wrote:
...
> individuals, I might agree with your [Sam Hartman's] reasoning. That is not the case.
> 

I believe that Russ's argument is correct. We do publish the direct
email addresses of WG Chairs and ADs on www.ietf.org, and I take
those (and addresses such as [email-masked], [email-masked] and
[email-masked]) to be the official ones that clearly must accept
mail from anyone except obvious spammers. If we declared the
aliases at tools.ietf.org to be official, things would be different,
but they are in fact just a convenience as Russ says.

So I don't see any obstacle to applying a PR Action to them.

As Sam said, this has nothing to do with the specific case in point.

    Brian

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Apr 2009 00:03:23 -0000

> That seems to be a real denial of service to us all.

There's a very short list of chronic misbehavers who waste a grossly
disproportionate amount of our time.  We all know who they are, and
even if you throw in a few sock puppets, you can count them on your
fingers and have plenty of fingers left over.  Every month or so one
or the other of them does yet another asinine thing and we waste days
arguing about what sanctions their latest offense merits, because they
delight in attracting attention to themselves by skating along the
edge of what's just barely tolerable.

The IETF really is one of the most open organizations on the planet.
I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and the IETF's are notable for the
broad participation and the toleration of rather brusque literary
styles.  It is not difficult to participate successfully, and to fall
afoul of these norms you have to be a truly major jerk.  I've also
been watching the usual suspects here and elsewhere (several also
infest ICANN lists, for example) and I cannot ever remember one of
them making a technical contribution whose merit even began to
approach the cost of dealing with their noise.

We do ourselves no favors by letting ourselves be distracted by people
who have proven to have a negative S/N ratio.  Indeed, I see some
evidence that the noise drives away people whose time is not
unlimited.  I'm certainly not proposing that we ban people who are
merely sometimes irritating*, but when specific people have a long
history of sending mail whose value has proven to be comparable to
mail from, say, Maryam Abacha, we would do ourselves a favor by
treating it the same way.

R's,
John

* - me, for example

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:18:06 -0400

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:

Russ, I'm failing to understand how your comments are responsive to
the points I made.  One of the things I said is that I was not
specifically speaking to the questino of whether removing Dean from
the aliases was reasonable.  However your entire response focused on
Dean.  

My question is whether treating tools.ietf.org aliases as IETF lists
is reasonable policy.  Your response is all about whether it is
reasonable for Dean to post to these lists.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:31:31 -0400

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 04:18:06PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:

> is reasonable policy.

In my opinion, it is.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:44:44 -0700

+1

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:01:26 -0400

Sam:

 > aliases so I can see if my postings make it.

I do not think we are talking about the spam policies.  We are 
talking about whether the PR-Action for these mail aliases is a 
suitable interpretation.

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:59:58 -0400

Dean:

>The official nomcom addresses are at tools.ietf.org

Not so.  The current NomCom can be reached at [email-masked].  It 
does appear that Joel mistakenly sent some mail from an address at 
tools.ietf.org, but one that I got said:

| Please return to [email-masked] no later than
| Oct 3, 2008.

Russ

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:29:58 -0700

More to the point, the guideline in RFC 3683 is:

    A PR-action identifies one or more individuals, citing messages
    posted by those individuals to an IETF mailing list, that appear to
    be abusive of the consensus-driven process.  If approved by the  
IESG,
    then:

Henk is applying the second bullet of the guideline and is, per the  
RFC, within his rights in doing so.

With respect to rai-ads@tools and similar lists, I can see it two  
ways. I should imagine that Dean could send mail directly to Cull at  
his Cisco email address, where only Cisco's and Cullen's filters are  
relevant, so there is not an argument that "Dean really needs access  
to rai-ads@". But unless Cullen sees an issue with posting to that  
list, it also doesn't solve a problem that anyone has (unless Henk has  
a problem as administrator). I see the second bullet as addressing the  
case where someone is a pain on some list such as the IDN list and  
migrates the problem to another list; if he has been banned from one,  
the administrator of the second has everything he needs to make that  
change. But that doesn't really apply in this case.

So I would ask what problem blocking access to lists at tools.ietf.org  
is solving, and if there is none, would argue in favor of a "principle  
of least mechanism"; there is no value in making someone go away from  
a place that he is not.

My two yen.

On Apr 17, 2009, at 8:32 AM, Samuel Weiler wrote:

>> I really don't understand why Dean should be blocked from [email-masked] 
>> .
>
> In the general case, I also see no harm in the blocking: those  
> aliases are for convenience, and it's easy to expand them using  
> public sources.  Blocking their use doesn't meaingfully hamper IETF  
> participation.
>
> -- Sam

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:31:51 +1200

>>> My question is whether treating tools.ietf.org aliases as IETF lists

But the question is not whether they are IETF lists. It's whether they
are official in the sense that IETF office-holders (such as WG chairs,
ADs and IAB members) are obliged to read what is sent to them, in
order to exercise their duties under our process BCPs.

I don't believe they are official in that sense. From which I
conclude that it's reasonable to extend any PR-action to cover them.

   Brian

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:37:28 -0700

> My question is whether treating tools.ietf.org aliases as IETF lists

And I would say that yes, they are IETF lists. For example, the  
tracker sends email through them. They are used by IETFers (well, by  
me at least) to get stuff to the right people without having to sort  
out who is the right AD/WG Chair/Author for a given email.

They sprang into being out of Henk's forehead, as opposed to being  
lifted out of the sea foam of IETF discussion. But they serve a useful  
IETF purpose and are built into many of the IETF tools.

If you are asking whether the policy SHOULD apply to them, that's  
another discussion. But as to whether they are IETF lists, if they are  
not, then to what do they belong?

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:45:02 -0400

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 02:29:58PM -0700, Fred Baker wrote:
> is solving

Well, one obvious one is that some chairs, &c., might have tricky
rules for capturing mail that actually pertains to the matters in
which they must listen to every crank on the planet due to process
rules, vs. other mail from the self-same cranks which can be
cheerfully discarded.  The "role" addresses represent a completely
separate path that needs to be tested, and so I can imagine such
chairs and so on asking, one at a time, for the filters to be
installed in this or that way.  This uses Henrik's valuable time.  It
seems to me like a problem worth solving.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:00:14 -0400

I want to stress that I'm not making any of the following arguments:

* Dean should be permitted to post to tools.ietf.org addresses--I don't care
* We should not ban people who have PR actions against them from tools.ietf.org - after consideration, I think banning specific people who have PR actions against them from posting to tools.ietf.org is fine
* The person running tools.ietf.org should not do something about abuse - absent any specific policy I think they should exercise good judgment

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> writes:

>>> My question is whether treating tools.ietf.org aliases as IETF

    Brian> But the question is not whether they are IETF lists. It's
    Brian> whether they are official in the sense that IETF
    Brian> office-holders (such as WG chairs, ADs and IAB members) are
    Brian> obliged to read what is sent to them, in order to exercise
    Brian> their duties under our process BCPs.

I think that's one of two questions.  I believe that most of the
review directorates assumes that sending mail to *-chairs or
[email-masked] is an entirely appropriate way to send review
comments.  I'd be really incredibly put out if a wg ignored my review
comments because I sent to a tools.ietf.org address rather than the
draft authors.  Similarly, I'd be incredibly annoyed if I sent a bof
proposal to [email-masked] and it was bitbucketed because of
my choice of address.

I have high confidence that

1) Chairs, ADs and draft authors should not treat legitimate mail to tools.ietf.org differently than mail to the individual email address.

2) Restricting someone's access to tools.ietf.org significantly
impacts their ability to participate in certain ietf processes,
including cross-area reviews, etc.  It does not make it impossible;
it requires them to do more work than someone who is not restricted.

3) It is possible to abuse the tools.ietf.org mailing lists.  Doing so should be dealt with.

4) It is possible to abuse an individual's mail address.  Doing so should be dealt with.

5) There are situations where it would be reasonable for an AD, chair,
or author to block mail they were receiving at their individual
address to deal with spam, abuse, etc.

So, in some sense I do think that the tools aliases have some official
status in that they significantly facilitate review within our
processes.  I think it would be a big problem if they were unreliable,
if we granted access to them unfairly, etc.  I also think it would be
a big problem if they were abused in a manner where people started
discarding legitimate traffic.

I think that our spam-/list policies are a bad fit for the tools
lists.  The spam/list policies are designed to provide spam control
and abuse handling for relatively large discussion groups.  Having the
archive remain useful is important to our lists, but not to the tools
lists.  Similarly, the availability of a public archive allows someone
to see if their postings are making it through.

In contrast each tools alias reaches a fairly small number of people.
Certain network effects--for example the tendency of a flamewar to
break out because of the actions of a small number of recipients are
less likely.  For example, I don't think it would make sense to
suspend someone from posting for a few days until they cool down from
the tools aliases although this has often been done with WG lists.

I think that the boundaries for taking action are likely different for
the tools aliases than for lists.  In many cases individual mail
filters will be better tools to apply than anything global.

In conclusion, I do agree that abuse management for tools.ietf.org is
necessary.  I simply don't believe that assuming all our list/spam
policies apply makes sense.  I think that considering those policies
and especially the principles behind them (good luck figuring out what
those are) would be a good idea.  I also don't think we need to spend
a bunch of time defining policies; until the tools maintainers do
something we disagree with, I see no need to spend a lot of time on
it.

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:02:45 -0400

>>>>> "Fred" == Fred Baker <[email-masked]> writes:

> My question is whether treating tools.ietf.org aliases as IETF lists

    Fred> And I would say that yes, they are IETF lists. For example,
    Fred> the tracker sends email through them. They are used by
    Fred> IETFers (well, by me at least) to get stuff to the right
    Fred> people without having to sort out who is the right AD/WG
    Fred> Chair/Author for a given email.

Fred, you seem to be focusing on whether they are IETF.  I hope we all agree on that.
I am  questioning whether they were lists:-) in the sense that we use the term in our policies.

I think they are close to lists, but not entirely the same.

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:32:11 +0200

On 2009-04-21 00:00 Sam Hartman said the following:

...

> those are) would be a good idea.

That seems reasonable to me.

>  I also don't think we need to spend

WFM.

	Henrik