Subject: Re: how to contact the IETF

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:21:07 -0500 (EST)

> From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>

    > This means that those "driving by" have to be tolerated, I think.

Ah, no.

Because if organizing an email campaign works for the FSF, next thing you
know, BigCorp X will be telling everyone who works for it 'we want standard Q
approved, please send email to the IETF list about that'. If we allow
ourselves to be influenced by a mass email campaign, all we are doing is
virtually guaranteeing that we will get more.  So I think we have an active
interest is responding _negatively_ to such campaigns.

Rather than adopt indirect measures (such as requiring people to be registered
users of a list), I would go straight to the heart of the matter, and adopt a
formal policy that a mass email campaign should count _against_ the position
taken by that campaign, precisely to dis-incentivize such campaigns.

	Noel

---

From: "Ed Juskevicius" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:34:59 -0500

Noel wrote:

> Rather than adopt indirect measures (such as requiring people to be 
> registered users of a list), I would go straight to the heart of the 
> matter, and adopt a formal policy that a mass email campaign should
> count _against_ the position taken by that campaign, precisely to
> dis-incentivize such campaigns.

A formal policy would require some clear definition of what a "mass email
campaign" is.  How would/could we draw a line and define that term?

Would 100 people sending more or less the same text to a list in less than
24 hours constitute a mass email campaign?  I would say 'yes'.

What about 50 people over 2 days?  Maybe still 'yes'.

How about 20 people over a week, or 10 people recited the same cut and
pasted text during a longer last-call timeframe?

I am not trying to pour cold water on your idea here, but rather I am
wondering how something like this could be formalized, versus handled as an
exceptional case when and if it occurs.

Regards,

Ed  J.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Noel
Chiappa
Sent: February 10, 2009 11:21 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: how to contact the IETF

Ah, no.

know, BigCorp X will be telling everyone who works for it 'we want standard
Q

Rather than adopt indirect measures (such as requiring people to be
registered
users of a list), I would go straight to the heart of the matter, and adopt
a
formal policy that a mass email campaign should count _against_ the position
taken by that campaign, precisely to dis-incentivize such campaigns.

	Noel
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:36:05 -0500

> exceptional case when and if it occurs.

I don't really how understand "count against" would
work in practice.

Melinda

---

From: "Ed Juskevicius" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:47:58 -0500

> I don't really how understand "count against" would

I agree.  This would be another important consideration for any policy, and
(I suspect) not very easy to define.

Regards,

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Melinda Shore [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: February 10, 2009 11:36 AM
To: Ed Juskevicius; 'Noel Chiappa'
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: how to contact the IETF

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:59:01 -0500

> interest is responding _negatively_ to such campaigns.

I don't think we have to do anything special to respond negatively to
such campaigns.  Basically we're all dealing with information overload
anyway, which provides plenty of incentive to prune irrelevant sources.
The more messages that we receive from people who either appear to be
parroting, or don't seem to have actually read the relevant documents
enough to understand the issues, the more difficult it will be for
anyone who has to gauge consensus or technical soundness to find the
rare new and valid point that might be made by some contributor to that
campaign.

> taken by that campaign, precisely to dis-incentivize such campaigns.

I disagree.  First because our primary obligation is to do what is
technically best for the Internet community as a whole (even if that
happens, probably by accident, to be aligned with what the campaigners
want), and second because that kind of policy might actually encourage
"gaming" of the IETF.

My suggestion is to have a page on the IETF page called "how to
influence IETF deliberations" which explains a few things, e.g.
(a) the meaning of Experimental, Informational, Proposed Standard, etc.;
(b) how the process works and who makes the deliberations at what
stages; (c) that it's important to read the documents (and perhaps the
references and/or supporting material like IPR statements) in order to
understand just what decision is under consideration, and it's often
important to read the mailing list traffic in order to understand what
alternatives were rejected, and why; and (d) why a single well-reasoned
and supported argument will quite naturally be given far more
consideration than a thousand messages parroting a less-well-reasoned
argument.  Sort of like a Tao of IETF for non-participants.

Keith

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:13:15 -0800

>interest is responding _negatively_ to such campaigns.

Most of the people who have been following this mailing list already 
know that mass email campaigns do not work.  I encourage the new 
participants to this list to read Section 9.1 of the Tao ( 
http://www.ietf.org/tao.html ).  Sending a flood of emails may even 
be counterproductive to your objective as it annoys regular 
participants and drowns comments from people who share your 
views.  If you are going to push the same opinion ( we don't like X 
because it will bring down the Internet ), it doesn't really matter 
whether you are ten or a hundred saying that as consensus is not a 
tally of votes.

>taken by that campaign, precisely to dis-incentivize such campaigns.

I don't think that a formal policy is needed.  I can see ways to use 
the count against the position in my favor. :-)  Although I am not 
happy about the letter-writing campaign and being forcefully 
subscribed to some random mailing list, I'll view it as the price to 
pay for being able to post to this mailing list.  This doesn't mean 
that I will put up with such behavior forever.  I fortunately have 
the choice to discard such messages automatically and I will do so.

Regards,
-sm