John, Trying to make this response a brief one, and hopefully the last message I need to write on this topic for a while. 1) While I generally support reducing secretariat workload when possible, I don't think it follows that it's to our advantage to "let them automate anything they can sensibly automate without causing severe problems", particularly without taking due care in how it is done. We've had quite a few problems already with lists being subject to arbitrary censorship, and many of spamassassin's criteria have no sound justification. I should at this point re-iterate that so far nothing harmful has been done, and it does look like there's some attempt at "due care". I hope that publicizing this issue will encourage more "due care". 2) I have given several reasons for objecting to adding [xxx] to message headers, ranging from theoretical/academic arguments about separation-of-function and layering to statements of personal experience that this very practice causes problems with reading mail on small displays, with searching, etc. These are not absolutes but merely factors that people should consider rather than immediately assuming that subject munging is a good idea. 3) It's gotten to the point that almost any argument about a technical subtlety on the IETF list gets labelled a religious war. I suspect this is partly because we're straining to articulate the justification for our positions (so they look somewhat like religious arguments even when there's an underlying technical basis for them), but that's inherent in the fact that these subjects are subtle. I remember a time when we valued the exchange that helped to illuminate these subtleties and give justification for our positions, and when we did not think that this level of exchange was inappropriate or an excessive consumption of bandwidth. I'm not sure what has changed, but I hope it's not the case that we can no longer try to understand subtle effects of technical decisions - because I believe our inability to do that has caused the quality of our output to suffer tremendously. 4) I see the [xxx] labelling as a design issue. Even if we claim we're only designing for ourselves, it's still a concern because to me the casual attitude toward adding [xxx] reflects a lack of understanding of fundamental network protocol design principles. I see the spamassassin filtering as a process issue, but one that affects our ability to produce good designs, because I've seen several occasions where valuable input from outsiders was discarded for arbitrary reasons and the design suffered for it. John, I know you well enough to know that - You've seen more than a few problems with header munging yourself, and with munging of protocols by intermediaries in general; - You are more aware than most that the Internet is a diverse community with widely varying needs and capabilities and that it is becoming more diverse all the time; - You know enough about protocol design to appreciate the value of separation of layers in general, and of separation of function between user agent and transport in particular; and - You know enough about information storage and retrieval systems to appreciate the value in keeping data models clean. So I don't think I need to convince you of these things. If I'm talking to you specifically, I try to frame my statements with knowledge of your experience and depth in mind. When I make statements like the above on the IETF mailing list, I'm doing so for the benefit of people who don't seem to understand these things (regardless of who is in the To field), and part of my reason for doing so is to try to remedy that situation in a small way. Any good design is necessarily a compromise. It might be that there are cases where, _after_ considering the various factors, that adding [xxx] is a reasonable compromise, particularly for a list that operates only for a year or two - one can argue that UA capabilities won't change much while the list is in use. However such compromises are _not_ justified by statements of the form "it works for me, therefore it is good for everyone" -- particularly when the Internet is so diverse and when there's a tendency for these practices to become entrenched. It does seem like we often get bogged down in arguments between people of widely varying depths, or between people of very different kinds of expertise. In the first case there is no basis for compromise because the person who is out of his depth doesn't understand the need for compromise or the basis that makes the compromise reasonable. In the second case compromise is difficult because there is little or no common ground. I'm not sure how to resolve either kind of impasse in a reasonable fashion other than by discussion, though this does sometimes get tedious. Yes, I'd like to find a better way. At any rate, it seems difficult to get a compromise before it is clear that people understand the issues associated with a decision. Only when people respond to an argument in a way that shows they understand and respect the issues, or at least, that they're willing to try to do so, does compromise become feasible. If there's a way to get closure on such issues more quickly I suspect it involves recognizing this and reflecting that recognition in our culture and processes. Keith