Subject: RE: we need a new mailing list

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

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

> 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...?

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

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]

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From: Frank Kastenholz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 19:59:09 -0400

At 05:26 PM 9/29/98 -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote:
>Group creations, dissolutions, last calls, and meeting administrivia...

IETF-announce

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From: Frank Kastenholz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 19:59:09 -0400

IETF-announce