It seems to me that limiting users to 3 messages / day (perhaps with a maximum number of bytes) would be a minimal impact on free speech but would limit the damage done by overly productive transmitters. This could be limited to users who are nominated to a "limit" list by many users. How difficult this would be to implement on the message exploders is another question. Steve Silverman > -----Original Message----- > From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx > [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of > Michael Thomas > Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 3:26 PM > To: IETF Discussion > Subject: "too many notes" -- a modest proposal > > > It seems to me that a lot of what causes working group lists to > melt down is simply the volume of traffic -- usually with plenty > of off-topic banter, or exchanges of dubious value, with > the resulting > conjestive collapse of our wetware buffering. On good days, the > drop algorithm may be more sophisticated than tail drops; on > bad days... > > Perhaps we should take a lesson from TCP and set a receive window > on IETF mailing lists in the face of conjestion. The sender is thus > obligated to keep the transmission within the window, and as a side > effect to consider the quality of the, um, quantity. Just > this simple > step would greatly limit (purposeful) DOS attacks and other death > spirals. It also mitigates the "free speech" attacks by not > throttling > based on content (which is inherently contentious), but based on > wg mailing list "bandwidth". > > in all modesty, Mike > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf