--On Saturday, 23 September, 2006 08:10 -0700 Dave Crocker
<dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> David Kessens wrote:
>> RFC 3883 has proven to me as an Area Director to be a very
>> effective tool to deal with extremely abusive behavior of a
>> select few.
>>
>> draft-carpenter-rescind-3683-01 will set us back in time as
>> we will need to have the whole management chain involved
>> again to take actions against abusive behavior by individuals
> ...
>> The PR action has allowed us to deal very efficiently with
>> these rare but existing cases.
>
>
> Right.
>
> Where has the case been made that RFC 3683 is not adequate?
>
> Where is the demonstration of community consensus that it
> needs to be replaced?
>
> From my view in the galleries, posting rights suspension has
> been asserted rarely and well.
>
> That's the definition of a good control mechanism, from my
> perspective.
Dave,
>From my place in the galleries, it appears to me that there have
been a very small number of attempts to assert the 3683
mechanism. Each has resulted in a firestorm of debate that has
arguably caused far more traffic, noise, and disruption to the
relevant mailing lists than the individual who was contemplated
to be banned. Control mechanisms that are intended to protect
mailing lists from disruption but that cause far more disruption
than they cure --at least for the lengthy period that they are
under consideration, discussion, and appeal -- are not within my
definition of a good mechanism. YMMD, of course.
My personal belief is that the principle of 3683 is correct:
there should be a way for the community to identify a persistent
bad actor and then to have lightweight mechanisms for banning
that individual from all lists for a very long time. The
problems with it are the ones that have been discussed many
times before: having the IESG make that sort of decision both
takes up time that the IESG might optimally be spending in other
ways and it raises questions when the abusive poster claims that
he or she is just vigorously protesting IESG behavior.
RFC 3683 and some of its predecessors, as interpreted, have also
had the nasty side effect of removing less drastic mechanisms
for pushing back on bad mailing list behavior from the IETF's
repertoire. From where I sit, it is important to have every
possible and reasonable mechanism available to persuade bad
actors to mend their ways (or spontaneously go away) before
stronger mechanisms are invoked.
I believe that we should ultimately end up with a mechanism that
is 3683-like, but that uses some community mechanism for review
that does not put the IESG and an IETF-list debate into the
critical path. But, as I have suggested in other contexts, I
believe that the community is burned out enough on process
issues to be unable to get details right, at least without
significant risk of doing more harm. So it seems to me that
removing 3683 and the other restrictions on lighter-weight
mechanisms is a useful step to clearing the tables... in the
hope that, not too long in the future, we can come back and
revisit the general posting rights question and get it right.
john
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