--On Friday, January 10, 2014 00:36 -0600 Pete Resnick
<presnick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 1/9/14 11:24 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
>
>> However, despite the fact that group syntax, including that
>> for empty lists, has been part of the mail header specs for
>> well over 30 years, we know that many systems have had
>> trouble with messages that contain only an empty group
>> indication. Those systems are not just non-conforming MUA or
>> mailstore implementations (or MTAs that violate the SMTP spec
>> and look at headers in transit) or antispam systems of
>> various qualities. They including a variety of coded and ad
>> hoc mail classification and filtering arrangements that may
>> require special arrangements for such addresses. Given the
>> risks and potential problems, I'd like to hear a little more
>> justification for switching to group syntax...
>
> John, several people were spoken to, including myself, and my
> understanding along with what I heard of the current
> collective wisdom was that the number of such custom coded
> systems that would be adversely affected by an empty group
> address in the To: field and actual addresses in the From: and
> Reply-To: (albeit the From: containing a bit-bucket address)
> would be exceedingly small and at pretty low risk. So my
> recommendation to the tools team was to go ahead with the
> experiment.
If this is an experiment, the announcement doesn't make that
clear. There is no statement of how to report issues that can't
easily be fixed, etc., just a date certain for the switchover.
As to "exceedingly small", are you measuring percentages?
Absolute numbers? How many contributors and reviewers is the
IESG prepared to lose if they can't get announcements with a
reasonable amount of effort? A few hundred (a small number
relative to the size of the IETF-Announce distribution)? A few
dozen (an "exceedingly small" number on the same scale)? Ten?
>...
>> than the apparent "the IESG decided on this and is
>> announcing it to the community".
> Most of the IESG was not involved in "deciding" this. The
> tools team worked with Barry and I, and we all consulted with
> other folks (well known to you) and recommended the experiment
> go forward. And to address your later comment: We don't want
> tools work (or other administrative activities) to require
> open IETF list discussions for every change, so sometimes the
> admin folks will consult with senior and experienced members
> of the community and go ahead with experiments of this sort.
> That it came out as an "IESG" announcement in this case is
> really accidental: The tools team asked the IESG for its
> approval (and the Apps ADs' advice) because the email messages
> at issue were IESG announcements. But this was far from some
> sort of super-secret top-down pronouncement. I'm sorry that it
> appeared that way.
>> (3) If someone actually does discover that they have a problem
>> and are dependent on a third-party supplier to get it
>> patched, 2 1/2 weeks are unlikely to be sufficient.
> Fair enough. I think extending the experiment would not be a
> big deal.
Again, the announcement didn't imply an experiment to me, only a
"here it comes, get ready or be prepared to lose" declaration.
> On 1/9/14 12:59 PM, SM wrote:
>> My guess about the problem is that people choose "Reply to
>> All". That generates more mail for iesg-secretary@. Using
>> a few (sieve) rules might alleviate the problem.
>
> It's not just a "more mail for iesg-secretary@" problem. Email
> to that address goes directly into a ticketing system, which
> unfortunately generates a new ticket if the subject line does
> not contain the correct ticket number. Then the secretariat
> has to go back and combine the tickets if the replies were
> relevant to the secretariat, or toss them if they were replies
> intended for the IETF list. Furthermore, you get bounces
> generated from the announce list (which persist when you get
> replies to replies), though sometimes you get the random
> message slip through to the announce list because of
> accidental non-moderation of the message. Not all of these can
> be handled (easily) with a simple sieve script.
It also creates the impression that the IESG Secretary is
responsible for the announcement and that messages questioning
the contents of the announcement should be sent to that address.
No accidents involved. As you may know, I made that assumption
after a perceived problem some days ago and, assuming that "IESG
Secretary" was actually a human (she certainly was the last time
I talked with her), even copied the "action" address, thereby
generating two tickets. So putting that particular address
there is clearly a bad idea. But that conclusion justifies the
new "noreply" address and an ingress filter at ietf.org which
discards any mail sent to that address, not the rest of the
changes.
> Again, if the experiment flops, we'll re-group. But I'm
> somewhat hopeful.
Thanks for the reply.
best,
john