On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 06:47:36PM -0700, Nick Staff wrote:
2. An IETF "netiquette" committee, to offload list banning
procedures from the IESG.
I'm a big fan of the netiquette committee. I'd like to suggest that
volunteers be allowed to "throw their names into the hat" and that members
be selected blindly from that pool. This would of course avoid any stacking
or favoritism, but we would need a "qualifier" that prevented interlopers
from submitting their name. Though I hate to suggest it as it would exclude
me from selection, having attended an IETF meeting in the last x years could
possibly be a good filter.
Maybe. I see two potential problems:
1) Serving on this committee is going to be no fun at all. Getting
qualified people to sign up for what will only be seen as a sh*t job
is going to be difficult. And how do you exclude certain known
(repeat) troublemakers from throwing their hat into the ring? Or
maybe you don't, but then if they get selected, they would then have
the opportunity to practice their own unique form of DOS on the
netiquette committee?
2) Unless discussion of the decisions of the netiquette committee,
during the committee is considering a request, and after the committee
has rendered a decision, is ruled out of scope, it's not going to help
the very long discussions such as this one which plague the IETF list.
In the worst case, we can assume that the mailing list abuser will
immediately appeal any decision of the netiquette committee, which
means that after inventing this entire mechanism, it may not have any
effect other than prolonging the agony.
Problem (2) could be solved by making the decisions of the netiquette
committee not subject to appeal, but that causes its own problems and
potential for abuse of the people who do end up on the committee. But
if you don't, then people who are intent on practicing their DOS
attacks (or otherwise impose their view of their world on us) will
simply use our procedures against us.
I suppose we could try to add some sanctions such as using a very
large ban time (measured in multiple years), so the benefit of trying
to get someone banned from the list is worth the cost, assuming we are
willing to preserve through the entire tortious process of (a) a
decision by the netiquette committe, (b) an appeal to the IESG, (c) an
appeal to the IAB, and eventually (d) an appeal to the Internet
Society --- or perhaps we could impose an automatic doubling of the
sanctions if someone attempts an appeal, and double the eventual ban
time at each level of appeal if the banning is eventually upheld.
But there isn't really a good solution to this problem, unfortunately.
- Ted
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