Dear Brian;
On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:15:05 +0200
Brian E Carpenter <brc(_at_)zurich(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com> wrote:
I'm interested to know whether people would see arguments for
either or both of
1. An IETF Ombudsman (or Ombudscommittee), to act as a dispute
mediator.
2. An IETF "netiquette" committee, to offload list banning procedures
from the IESG.
I would support this. I suspect that suggestion number 1 might be most
appropriate.
These cases are going to be tough, and an outside review with some measure of
independence from the
system will be necessary to be seen as fair. For example, in the original email
of David Kessens,
which contained a mail thread of "abusive" mail, the trouble to me was that no
one of those
emails contained anything I would regard as abusive. The trouble is that the
abuse (if any) is in
the pattern over time, not what's said at any one time.
I remember back in 1997 or so being on a working group mailing list that was
subject to the
attentions of the Alternic and IPv8 crowd. While their posts were mostly
polite, the shear number of
them, and the way that things could go off on total tangents did represent a
DOS. (Frankly, the
words Chinese Water Torture come to mind.) Once you've been subjected to
something like that for a
while, there is a real danger of over-reaction, banning people just because
they innocently bring up
a sensitive topic. And, of course, it may be hard to convince people you are
being fair no matter
what you do, if there is no one email you can point to as evidence.
So I think that intrinsic to fairly treating this problem is a need to convince
someone on the
outside of the reality of the perceived abuse. If the offender consistently
(say) calls someone rude
names, that is easy, and can be done (say) on this list. If the abuse
consists of a pattern of
email traffic over time, then someone will have to at least dip into the stream
and read it, and
that (to me) suggests an Ombudsman. In the case that engendered this
discussion, for example, I see
no outwardly abusive emails of the name-calling variety, but neither do I feel
the inclination to
read a few months of back traffic for the relevant WG's. In the best Scottish
tradition, I would
therefore have to return a verdict of "not proven," and would feel happier if
there was a report
from an outside party.
If there is to be a committee, I would suggest that it be formed randomly from
volunteers who hold
no other posts, in the NomCom fashion.
Regards
Marshall
Brian
Dave Crocker wrote:
That's the reason the process model delegates handling such problems
to specific individuals, rather than having all of us, together,
participate in the review and assessment.
Actually, 3683 specifically requires community discussion of motions
to block someone's posting rights. It is, in so many words, done by a
Last Call.
I was too cryptic.
Were we only subject to discussion of a 3683 Last Call and were that
discussion limited to the actual merits of the complaint, we would have
very, very little ietf list traffic in this realm.
What actually happens is that we get lots of list discussion at each
step along the way, starting with individual pique at a claimed offense,
individual pique that someone posted a note stating their individual
pique, endless discussion about proper process, and endless discussion
about abuses of process.
My point about delegation is that it is based on a desire to offload
some/much/most/all of a task so that the full community is not burdened
with all of the details. The difference between the
"some/much/most/all" of course depends upon how much of the burden the
community wants to retain.
The concept of a public Last Call, for the disciplinary process,
suggests that only the final stage of the process needs to be fully public.
If we are going to get the desired benefit that comes from delegating
things, we need to be more selective in what is discussed publicly.
That's not a call for censorship. It is a call for discipline.
For one thing, debating the official details of process requirements
should almost certainly be taken offline from the IETF list.
For another, individual pique is best pursued either by private exchange
or through formal complaint. Neither requires burdening the full IETF
list.
d/
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