Re: John Cowan supports 3683 PR-action against Jefsey Morfin

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Anthony G. Atkielski wrote:
> John Cowan writes:
> 
>> Filtering him out individually, as I do, is insufficient: one still must
>> read the polite or exasperated responses of others.  I am almost at the
>> point where I will filter any posting that so much as *mentions* him.
> 
> Why don't you do that, then, so that he need not be banned just for
> your convenience?

And then suddenly somebody makes a seriously good contribution and your
filter accidentally filters out that message which does have a lot of
value and thus importance for the working group. The signal to noise
ratio has risen way too much by all this talk about one person and
simply takes away a lot of time from a lot of people who can do a lot
more technically interesting work when that ratio is brought back to
signal instead of just being noise. Being able to completely shutdown a
person after having repeatedly warned that person about his behavior is
the only real solution here.

Another aspect is that the mailing lists also contains those
non-technical,non-wg-relevant discussions which effectively are on the
level of Usenet-alike flame war going back and forth in the mailing list
archives. Anybody wanting to join the wg will only find those messages,
possibly missing out on the things that really matter. That doesn't help
in progressing the task of the working group at all. Discussions should
be based on technical aspects relevant to that working group, not to a
myriad of other arguments which are far from the topic of the WG's task.

Yes, it is excluding somebody from giving his viewpoints, but it is not
without arguments that this will be done and the person who this is
bestowed upon has had many chances of bettering his way of posting and
drifting off topic all the time.

Note also that the PR only allows the complete banishment from the list
if that WG decides that that is deemed necessary. Other WG's which do
not have a problem with the postings of a PR'd person can freely choose
to accept them, but of course then have a choice to ban the person too.

[..]
> But you still mention irrelevant matters external to this mailing list
> in your post. Any personal problem you may have with someone outside
> the list (or vice versa) is completely unrelated to IETF work or
> mailing lists, and the inconvenience you suffer from having to press
> the delete key is also only very tenuously linked to this list.

Thus in your opinion you tolerate the behavior where people contact your
boss for actions you take personally (IETF is on personal basis not on
business basis, at least in theory) on a public forum!?

Another way to look at your point of view is to say that mailinglists
should accept spam. As the enduser who receives the list should simply
filter them out.

If somebody has a problem with you in the way you are behaving in such a
forum one contacts the list administrator or working group chair. It's a
list issue when it originates on the list, not a business issue, thus
your boss has absolutely no relevance in this area. It more sounds like
such a method can only be meant as a backstabbing 'teach a lesson'
method to a person than anything else. What good does that bring?
Or do you also call up the wife of the WG chair when you don't like his
decision to complain to him that she should give him food that evening
as you don't have any arguments left any more and simply start doing ad
hominem attacks?

> Maybe your employer's advice wasn't so bad.

That is is true of course, looking at the situation, taking a bit of a
stand-off point of view, reiterating things before doing etc are a good
thing, but sometimes the SnR ratio simply becomes way to high...

Greets,
 Jeroen

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