On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 08:24:45AM -0400, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
I just have been a member of the mailing list for a few days and what I
have seen appalled me. It seems that a small "clique" of people are the
only ones participating, and half of their discussions are squabbles and
personal attacks against each other. It is very hard to get any word in or
any meaningful discussion to be held.
You are absolutely right, you observed this very well.
This working group was under a certain kind of attack from the
very begining. It once was going to become a technical forum where
different people were presenting different proposals and different
approaches about how to understand and fight against Spam. This is
how research and engineering should be.
Unfortunately the group was jammed by only a few (really, only
a hand full of) persons who started to attack and counterfight
any single technical thought, draw every discussion thread to a
completely different subject and to especially cover any contribution
with a thick layer of noise. Have a look at the discussion
archive. Try to find the technical and research related
contributions. They are there, but try to find them.
Ironically, it was just the Anti-Spam working group which was
spoiled by a certain kind of Spam. On one hand, that's a pity.
On the other hand, take it as a (unintended) result of research.
From my point of view, this gave a good example of sabotage of
open working groups, which might also be seen as one aspect of Spam.
The reasons for objecting any effort to get rid of Spam are different,
as I learned from that group, from background, and from positive and
negative comments to my draft:
- lazyness, people don't want to clean up and organize their
network or change their internet lifestyle
- political/freedom of speech: Some people believe that any kind
of restriction to sending arbitrary e-mail (address and message
body) is a violation of freedom of speech
- business: Lots of people earn money with Spam or selling
content filters. That's a billion dollar market as we learned
at the last group meeting in SF. Solving the Spam problem in
a simple way would defeat that market.
Some parties commercially depend on their particular business
solution against Spam. Finding a world wide standard solution
would bring them in trouble.
So this particular working group is working against strong existing
interests (has this ever happened before with an IETF/IRFT working
group?) and therefore without any doubt being antagonized.
Maybe the result of this research group is not only the end of
a completely open mail system. It might also be the end of an
open group system like IETF/IRTF.
Take it as a result of research.
Hadmut
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