> Sam, > Clearly we should be thinking about some way to "charge" > participants for potentially abusing the IETF appeals process > in general. There is some minimal processing time associated > with any appeal for everyone who has anything to do with it. > I don't think posting rights is the way to do this. For > one thing, it is obvious that this too can be appealed. > Perhaps the appeal process should require that a token > cash amount must be deposited with some ISOC general fund - > with the provision that the deposit would be reimbursed if > the appeal is found to have merit? I've been trying to stay out of this discussion, but I simply cannot let this one pass. Incentives of various sorts, including negative incentives like this, are something economists have studied quite extensively. (*) What they've found is that in many cases this backfires badly - imposing a fee results in much more of the behavior you want to discourage, not less. The problem seems to be that by assigning a price you're in effect saying "this is how much an appeal costs, if you feel like spending this amount you should feel free to appeal." It changes what should be an extraordinary and exceptional event into an ordinary and normal one. And this will apply regardless of the spin you put on the matter - money talks ... well, you know the rest. I'm pretty confident that we have enough people with sufficient disposable income and strongly held feelings about something or other that this approach would cause a lot of trouble. And no, I don't have an alternative to suggest, other than to note that appeals are still pretty rare and I believe Mr. Morfin is unique in having filed more than one, let alone five. In other words, I'm not sure that aside from Mr. Morfin there's a real problem to be solved here. Ned (*) I'm at work and don't have any books handy to cite, so I'm afraid I cannot give any good references for work done in this area. Perhaps someone else can oblige... However, the popular book "Freakonomics" discusses this issue, albeit not in sufficient depth for my taste. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf