Hi. I contemplated just sending this to the IESG but it may need broader community discussion. As I think we all know, someone occasionally posts inappropriate messages to an IETF-provided mailing list, sometimes attacking the person who posted an earlier message to the list and not their ideas. Sometimes those public attacks are followed by private ones that might even be threatening. Of course, that sort of behavior violates at least the intent of the code of conduct and, under certain circumstances, the anti-harassment policies. It is not clear what we can do about the off list attacks, but we should not facilitate them and, where practical, should be offering assistance to mitigate them. When such transactions involve this list (the main IETF discussion one), there is a sergeant-at-arms team with whom issues can be raised. When it is on a WG list, my understanding is that WG Chairs are charged with ensuring good behavior. However, it is not clear what should what the model is for non-WG lists and who is accountable if bad behavior occurs and is either very egregious or persists. My recollection (maybe wrong) is that we used to identify the responsible parties for such lists. Now, it seems that many such lists contain only a footer that says the equivalent of: XXX list run by XXX-owner at ietf.org In the interest of transparency and accountability, shouldn't the people involved in managing such a list be identified? If they post to the lists they are "running", their names and email addresses are exposed, so their participation and identities are not secret, only their responsibilities. It is reasonable that correspondence about the list go to a different address than their ordinary one(s), but that does not require hiding their names either. Would it be reasonable to replace the line/ template above with something more like: XXX list maintained by Jane Jones and Joe Smith, contact address XXX-owner@xxxxxxxx (I object to "run" for other reasons, but don't feel strongly about it in this context if others prefer it.) Or is it the IETF's position that no one is actually responsible for monitoring the appropriateness of content on non-WG lists or accountable for doing, or not doing, that? thanks, john
