There is an interesting lesson to be learned from our mailing list
management situation...
The mailing list procedures draft currently under discussion
(draft-hartman-mailinglist-experiment-01.txt) contains the following correct
assessment of our current mailing list management situation:
"RFC 3934 [RFC3934] amends RFC 2418 and grants the working group chair
the ability to suspend a member's posting rights for 30 days.
However it appears to remove the ability of the AD and IESG to
approve longer suspensions or alternative procedures: "Other methods
of mailing list control, including longer suspensions, must be
carried out in accordance with other IETF-approved procedures." An
argument could be made that the amendment was not intended to remove
the already-approved procedures in RFC 2418 although a perhaps
stronger argument can be made that the actual textual changes have
the effect of removing these procedures."
Unfortunately, this problem was introduced during IESG and/or RFC Editor
processing of RFC 3934. The last published I-D (the one circulated for IETF
LC) said:
"Other
methods of mailing list control, including longer suspensions, must
be approved by the IESG or carried out in accordance with other
IESG-approved procedures."
I was the author of this draft, but I no longer remember how/when this
change was introduced. Someone from the IESG or RFC Editor might be able to
tell from checking their records, but the change isn't mentioned in the
public tracker.
BTW, I am not disavowing responsibility for this change. I have every
reason to believe that I, as author of the RFC in question, was asked my
opinion...
Margaret
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