Subject: we need a new mailing list

From: [email-masked]
Date: 27 Sep 1998 20:26:29 -0400

I would like to see a new mailing list, [email-masked], whose
charter is restricted to technical issues and discussion.  

What would it take to create such a mailing list?

I'd like to leave the [email-masked] list in place for other traffic.

		Marc

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From: "Flanigan, Bill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 18:10:37 -0400

I feel it's not so much a question of "(w)hat it would take to create such a
mailing list" as it would be to keep it on target--charter or no charter.
How do you folks envision that this could/would be done?  Bozo filters?
List moderator?  Periodic purges?  A progression of lists each with a life
of, say, six months?  Or...?

Bill

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
William F. Flanigan, Jr., Ph.D.       Voice:           (703) 681-2318
Defense Information Systems Agency      Fax:           (703) 681-2814 
Information Assurance Office (JED)      DSN:                      761      
5600 Columbia Pike, Room 632     Voice Mail:           (703) 681-2318   
Falls Church, VA 22041-2717        Internet:  <[email-masked]>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Marc Horowitz [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Monday, September 28, 1998 11:21 PM
> To:	Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Cc:	Sascha Ignjatovic; [email-masked]
> Subject:	Re: we need a new mailing list
> 
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> >> >On 27 Sep 1998 [email-masked] wrote:
> >> >
	[snip]

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 17:26:17 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "Flanigan, Bill" <[email-masked]>

> ...
> ...

Consider why kooks post to [email-masked].  It's not only because they love
to irritate sane people.  In most cases, it is because they have a screaming
need to participate in something important.  They have the notion that
the SuperInfoHypeWay is important, that people who know about the HypeWay
and are influential read [email-masked].  They know that [email-masked] is
not appropriate for their messages, but they also know somewhere deep down
that they can't hold up their ends of technical discussions or even
semi-technical talk about whether a document should be a BCP or Proposed
Standard.  Still, they are driven to prove that they participate and
matter.  Thus, you have the recent, very sad "nominations" spectacle.

I've long claimed that much of the noise comes from the death of the
comp.protocols.tcp-ip newsgroup, which many will say died 10+ years ago
when it was converted from a mailinglist to a newsgroup.  Even many sane
people need to talk about Internet things where some Internet powers that
be might hear.  Everyone knows that no one reads c.p.t-i, so where can
J.Q.Public ask about DOS PPP binaries or complain about an ISP or phone
company?

If there were a separate IETF mailing list chartered for IETF Working
Group creations, dissolutions, last calls, and meeting administrivia, and
if the name of the other list implied its limited scope, then people who
want to be heard about the conspiracy among legacy programmers against
IPv8 or the secret deal among the IANA, MicroSoft, and NetScape to exclude
an investigative reporter would stick to [email-masked].  Most IETF
participants would move to the new list, but there would be enough
monitoring the old (such as the Saintly Fred) to give sufficient cachet
to being seen in the old so that even the kooks would not bother with the
new.  Consider how little the kooks bother the working group lists,
including POSSON where their words would almost be appropriate.

Someone recently asserted that the IETF should official sanction a list
for non-technical issues, presumably including individual lists of
nominations to the IANA board and global conspiracies among legacy
programmers.  I think it's clear that any such list would immediately
implode like all unmoderated alt.politics.* or talk.politics.* newsgroups.
The old, real-world advice to not talk religion or politics applies to
big mailinglists, although not because of the danger of being tarred and
feathered, but because of the certainty of finding that the kooks and
pathologically ignorant completely dominate the discussion.

Sanctioning a list, as opposed to installing a sewer, is a bad idea.  Even
with a moderator, the best you could hope for would be the equivalent of
talk-radio.  IETF mailinglist don't have the equilalent of a professional
politician's office staff to respond "thank you for your concern," count
the concern, and file it in File 13 or, if appropriate, with the FBI.

The IETF needs a top-level, completely open, unmoderated list, where
arbitrary concerns can be expressed.  Moderating IETF lists is a bad idea,
if only because it would give aid and comfort to the kooks.  I think that
much of the gTLD soap opera was caused by sane, knowledgable people paying
too much attention to kooks, and giving outsiders the idea the kooks might
be right.  Silencing the kooks would be even worse.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 18:09:17 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Frank Kastenholz <[email-masked]>

> >Group creations, dissolutions, last calls, and meeting administrivia...
>
> IETF-announce

I understand IETF-announce to be for pure annoucements, not discussions.

Regardless of whether my understanding is right about the current lists,
there should be a minimal-traffic, absolutely-no-discussion-of-any-sort
annoucnement list, and somewhere else for discussions about announcments
and other IETF business.  The recent talk about the email submission BCP
or Proposed Standard should not appear in an annoucements-only list for
those who only want to know what's going on.

If you mean say that the objection to the Last Call for that Proposed
Standard and the responses to the objection were in any way inappropriate
for a pan-IETF list, then I respectfully disagree.

Where would you guys chatter about the latest problems with IETF hotels
or the Terminal Room?  For obvious reasons, those are discussions are not
very interesting to me, but they don't belong in any working group list
or IETF-announce.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 18:09:17 -0600 (MDT)

---

From: "Marsh, Miles (Gene)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:59:19 -0400

Marc,

Careful!  Censure is a very touchy subject.  Those whose opinions you do not
appreciate are best handled by either filtering them yourself or by ignoring
them completely (best approach).

Gene Marsh
Diebold Incorporated

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Horowitz [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 1998 7:28 PM
To: Flanigan, Bill; Harald Tveit Alvestrand; Sascha Ignjatovic;
[email-masked]

"Flanigan, Bill" <[email-masked]> writes:

>> I feel it's not so much a question of "(w)hat it would take to
>> create such a mailing list" as it would be to keep it on
>> target--charter or no charter.  How do you folks envision that this
>> could/would be done?  Bozo filters?  List moderator?  Periodic
>> purges?  A progression of lists each with a life of, say, six
>> months?  Or...?

Well, the first problem as I see it is that [email-masked] has no
useful charter.  Once we have a list with a useful charter, then we
can see what happens.

If someone showed up at a physical meeting and kept making comments
which weren't on-topic for the meeting, I assume that eventually, that
person would be removed.  As practically anything internet-related is
on-topic for [email-masked], either we need to change the charter of
the list (hard), or create a new list (easier).  I'm personally not
against filters for people who post off-topic on the new list.

		Marc

---

From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:26:14 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
<snip>
>very interesting to me, but they don't belong in any working group list

The IETF may want to look to other organizations for ideas.
The CharityChannel forums support over 20,000 people. Some
(not all) of the structure of their lists may be able to be applied
to the IETF. Note, they have a "big tent" list where almost any
topic is discussed, they have many more specialized lists for
people interested in those aspects of their industry. The IETF
may be able to borrow some of their structure...

    http://charitychannel.com/forums/

Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com
End-2-End: VPC(Java)--<IPv4>--C+@---<IPv8>---C+@--<IPv4>--(Java)VPC
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt
http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm

---

From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:26:14 -0500

-----Original Message-----

Jim Fleming

---

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 98 18:18:27 GMT

I'll raise again the suggestion that I vaguely remember making back
when we split off the -announce list:

 1) ietf-discuss, to discuss topics from the -announce list.  This would
    have a restricted charter to be the official location for such
    things as "last call" discussion.

 2) ietf-interest, for "outside" folks to learn about and banter about
    the ietf itself.  Hopefully with more interesting traffic than
    isoc-interest has carried -- more like end2end-interest.

Drop the ietf@ list entirely.  Never ever allow gateways to
netnewsgroups again.  Bounce crossposting.  Moderate postings from
non-subscribers.  All the usual mailing list features.

[email-masked]
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

---

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 98 18:18:27 GMT

[email-masked]

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:04:16 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>

>     isoc-interest has carried -- more like end2end-interest.

"ietf-discuss" is too general.  It would be an open invitation for people
to discuss anything they think is related to the SuperHypeWay, from
conspiracies of legacy programmers abusing the IETF standards process to
the failure of the ISOC and the IETF to force MicroSoft to implement Java
as Sun specifies, and so forth and so on.  Names like "ietf",
"ietf-interest", and "ietf-discuss" are attractive nuisances, and any
outfit that uses them must expect children to drown in pools of whatever.

Better names would be completely obscure like [email-masked] and [email-masked].

> Drop the ietf@ list entirely.

Forcing the bad traffic out of ietf@ by closing it won't reduce it by a
single bit.

The advantage of the old "ietf@" name is that it looks like the right
place for drek.  I say leave [email-masked] in place so that it can collect
and drain sewage, and forget about it.  Let the kooks and those those who
enjoy baiting kooks utilize it.  It would cost nothing.  Let them have a
place where they can publically disclose all the conspiracies they find.

>                                Never ever allow gateways to
> netnewsgroups again.

Why?  The noise problem has nothing to do with the many private/corporate
mail->news gateways of many IETF lists all over the world.  I agree such
gateways should be discouraged, but it is foolish to outlaw something you
cannot detect and that has lately done no harm.  How can you tell whether
[email-masked] is a person or a script?

>                       Bounce crossposting.

The abusers are smart enough to take pages out of their friends the
spammers' handbook, and do the obvious to make crossposting undetectable.
Banning overt crossposting would merely make filtering more difficult,
and keep a few innocents from responding to crossposted bait.

>                                             Moderate postings from

Moderating has the old man-power problem, as well as the worse perception
problem among powerful (eg. government) outsiders, unless you allow the
kooks to subscribe, in which case you still have the manpower problem and
have only reduced the already low rate of spam.

It is vital for the health of the IETF that abuse no worse than that
currently practiced by the kooks is not filtered by the IETF.  It would
be swell if they could be taught, but if they can't, it would be far worse
for the IETF to actually filter them.  You would have to let them
subscribe.  Consider that most outsiders would not and do not see the
point of the complaints.  They find reports of the crimes of reactionary
legacy internet programmers not only plausible but relevant.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:04:16 -0600 (MDT)

---

From: Thomas Dineen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:10:11 -0700 (PDT)

GentlePeople:

    From the amount of traffic we are seeing on this issue I am
beginning to believe that we need a new mailing list just to discuss
whether we need new mailing lists!

   Other possible lists:
   Allisat On Democracy
   Allisat On Conspiracies
   New IANA Board
   IANA Board Nominations
   
   Now here is a radical idea.
   How about an IETF list for engineering issues only?

Thomas Dineen

---

From: Thomas Dineen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 19:10:11 -0700 (PDT)

GentlePeople:

   Other possible lists:
   Allisat On Democracy
   Allisat On Conspiracies
   New IANA Board
   IANA Board Nominations

Thomas Dineen