Subject: Re: This IETF discussion list

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 17:12:18 -0700

It appears that this list is in danger of going the way of the ASRG list.
That is currently down to about 6 active posters and a chair that appears to
regard the primary purpose of the group as a platform for his media
appearences.

I suspected at an early stage that a faction within ASRG wanted to break up
the group. The tactics I saw used were the type of behavior that is more
commonly associated with Trotskyite entryism tactics. The pattern of
behavior was as follows:

Every constructive proposal to the list was drowned out by repeated postings
of ridiculous and abusive objections. My contention that spam frequently
contains forged headers was attacked repeatedly as 'lies' etc. It turned out
that the facts about spam sender behavior were not in dispute, only the
definition of forged.

Other people were driven away with simple abuse. One woman who is a leader
of one of the significant industry forums was described as "a snake" and
generally told her contributions are unwellcome.

Another form of trolling the group was to send offensive bounce messages to
other list members 'your message has been identified as spam and reported to
DCC so it will be blocked everywhere else'.

A large number of people have left the group and cited behavior of members
of the faction as the reason. Response from chair, block posts from people
who are not members of the faction! My posts have been blocked because I am
starting another anti-spam group in a different forum (I am happy to share
the message where the chair admits this).

At first I thought this was just standard IETF flamewars. After a while I
started to wonder if the faction was actually a group of spam senders who
were running anti-spam operations as cover. If you think about it this makes
a lot of sense, you could run a blacklist of open relays and unblacklist the
relays at exactly the time you want to use them. Result you can get more
mail through than your competitors.

This seemed unlikely though. After a while I realized the pattern, the
members of the faction who were being deliberately disruptive have a
position as known anti-spam crusaders. They simply do not want a solution to
the spam problem, if that goes away so does their position.

That also explains some of the positions in the arguments over the
definition of spam. Some people have been attempting to define spam to be
'that which my application detects and eliminates'. Even that would be OK if
they had not been so offensive in the way they said it.

Constructive criticism is good, but the type of criticism I have been seeing
is of the kind that is deliberately destructive, criticism for the sake of
criticism. 

I find it particularly telling that ideas that I introduced to the group
when it started are now being proposed by the people who attacked them in
unplesant terms. 

I do not think this model is working. A rational way to start a research
group would be to bring some people together and then let them elect someone
to organize and chair the group. I know this is not the IETF way, but it is
the only way I know that succeeds in being genuinely open and genuinely
inclusive.

I know this is the IRTF not the IETF, but the media is being told that the
group is the IETF answer to the spam problem. The subject of spam has major
media attention.

If the IETF is going to run itself on the experts protecting the Internet
from itself model then please stop trying to claim that it is somehow has
invented a mechanism that is more democratic than democracy. At least if the
IETF admitted its organization structure was really an oligarchy it could
then convene a blue riband panel to look at this problem or send experts to
the panels that do convene. 

Instead we have a structure that is failing and an organization that is
shrinking.  It is not just the end of the dotcom boom that is causing the
IETF to shrink. The standards are being developed in other fora, places
where there is real accountability and real inclusiveness. By inclusiveness
I don't just mean I get to say what I like and the chair then feels free to
ignore my opinion and that of the rest of the group and substitute their own
unilaterally because they are going to decide how they define consensus.  

When I first got involved in the IETF ten years ago the big issues were the
deployment of IPv6, DNSSEC and IPSEC. Today the same three big issues are on
the table with negligible progress for the time spent. The world is simply
not prepared to wait ten years for the IETF to think about perhaps
addressing the spam problem.

		Phill

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 17:12:18 -0700

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		Phill