In praise of RFC 3683 (Re: IETF Last Call)

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One rather different thread:

Sam said:


However a PR action is an incredibly huge hammer.  If passed, it
removes any process barrier to shutting Jefsey out of any IETF
process.  While this PR action is specifically targeted at the
ietf-languages list it would give the person running any IETF list the
ability to unilaterally remove Jefsey from that list.

--On torsdag, januar 19, 2006 22:25:43 -0500 John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:

For whatever it is worth, I want to remind the IESG that, before
there was RFC 3683, there was a notion, not only of 30 day
suspensions, but of exponential (or other rapidly increasing
series) back-off.  If someone is being severely disruptive on a
particular list, it would seem reasonable to me for the relevant
AD to authorize a 60 day suspension if a 30 day one is
ineffective, a 120 day suspension if that is ineffective, and so
on.  The nature of that arithmetic is such that someone could,
with  sufficient repeated disruptive behavior, find themselves
rather effectively banned for the effective duration of a WG.
If the IESG believes that a formal RFC3933 experiment is needed
to do that, then let's write down and run that experiment.
But, until we have tried the above --and any other plausible
actions we can think of-- let's save the 3683 actions for those
whose behavior is more clearly inappropriate and
non-constructive than Jefsey's.

Actually I'd like to hark back to a simpler time (approximately 2000)....

At that time, there were no central rules for IETF mailing lists. Administrators did what they felt they had to do - including making individual decisions to suspend disruptive individuals for a time period of their choosing, including "permanently", with or without telling anyone they had done so (There were some rules in 2418 section 3.2, but they were largely ignored).

And things worked fairly well.

Then, based on some incidents, the IESG started making and enforcing rules:

- Lists are open by default (even spam filters need to be careful)
- Suspensions are to be announced publicly, including "why"
- Suspensions are for a limited time
- Suspensions are to be decided by the IESG, not the listadmin
- Suspensions will take note of the rules in 2418, which actually say the two last things above.

and so on and so forth. (Blame the then-chair, one Alvestrand...)

The community decided to share in the codification; RFC 3005, RFC 3683 and RFC 3934 are some of the results.

Scott Hollenbeck pointed out to me that RFC 3683 is actually more subtle than I had remembered; the words in it are:

  o  those identified on the PR-action have their posting rights to
     that IETF mailing list removed; and,

  o  maintainers of any IETF mailing list may, at their discretion,
     also remove posting rights to that IETF mailing list.

There's nothing in there about the IETF list specifically; until Brian or the sergeants-at-arms decide otherwise, a PR-action doesn't affect it.

Apart from the list where the complaint originated, this can be seen as a *return* to the pre-2000 state: Power in the hand of the listadmin, and no involvement of the IESG in the individual decisions.

I think this is not a blunt instrument at all. It's a subtle one.

                   Harald


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