Re: "too many notes" -- a modest proposal & Re: Proposal for keeping "fr

[aggregated message, the from's are in the cc, Rob see first reply]

Top-PS: Did folks see and read the following:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hartman-mailinglist-experiment-00.txt


Michael Thomas wrote:
[..]
> Perhaps we should take a lesson from TCP and set a receive window
> on IETF mailing lists in the face of conjestion. The sender is thus
> obligated to keep the transmission within the window, and as a side
> effect to consider the quality of the, um, quantity. Just this simple
> step would greatly limit (purposeful) DOS attacks and other death
> spirals. It also mitigates the "free speech" attacks by not throttling
> based on content (which is inherently contentious), but based on
> wg mailing list "bandwidth".
A couple of mailinglists already have a form of this, eg for the ipv6
working group mailinglist, see:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipv6/current/msg06123.html

This started somewhere around 18 Aug 2003 on request of the chairs.
ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng/ipng-mail-archive/ipng.200308
Note that the list was then still hosted at SUN.

Afaik, since this was introduced, people did start posting with higher
content quality and lower quantity. Maybe Rob Austein can provide the
numbers in a nice graph or some other details?

Steve Silverman wrote:
> It seems to me that limiting users to 3 messages / day (perhaps with a
> maximum number of bytes) would be a
> minimal impact on free speech but would limit the damage done by
> overly productive transmitters. This could be limited to users  who
> are nominated to a "limit" list by many users.
Limiting to less than 3 per day would be the same as suspending for X
hours. Next to that it might also inhibit one from fixing a statement,
though of course one should re-read their post before posting.

> How difficult this
> would be to implement on the message exploders is another question.
Mailman is python and it should not be to difficult to add per-poster
counters, but this would also require that the secretariat applies those
patches and then hope that these changes are really working perfectly
well. A lot of testing would be required. Many people depend on the list
software, breaking it is not something that will be taken lightly ;)
Also avoiding such counters can be done easily by using multiple
subscriptions, but indeed that would be obvious.

Doug Royer wrote:
> Are you going to write mailing list software an provide it
> free of charge to implement all of this?
That already exists, it is called Mailman, which is what at least
@ietf.org uses and several of the lists not hosted here also.
Note the "X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5" header in every post.

The existing lists are already there, just add an extra 'full' list,
subscribe the mainlist to the full list, which is quite normal with
umbrella lists, and presto. Now when somebody gets suspended from the
mainlist, the WG Chair can then ask the listadmin to move the
subscription of the to be suspended person from the mainlist to the
alternate list. Thus add on full, remove from main.

The technical part is the very easy part here. It is politics and maybe
more over ethnics and some other factors which are the hard parts.


Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
[..full/main list..]
> In fact this has been implemented at least once that I know of - on
> the DNSO GA mailing list. The "full" version had relatively few
> subscribers.
Only suspended folks or "suspended-lovers" (AmaViS style) would indeed
be interested in following it. To avoid this we could, at first setup
the full list to contain all the members of

The DNSO list also has a long 'rules of order' file:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2000.GA-ga-rules-v0.4.html

> Another variant is the ietf-censored version of the IETF list that I
> ran for a while, but left to others when becoming IETF chair - google
> claims that
> <http://vesuvio.ipv6.tilab.com/mailman/listinfo/ietf_censored>
> is a current page for it.
I guess the main problem with this list is that the WG Chair doesn't
have (much) influence on it. It is neither an official list. Also it is
not clear who has been censored or not, which indeed means censoring,
while IMHO we still want to allow people to voice their opinions and not
simply discard them. The naming 'censored' is thus quite correct for
this list but I that is also something that the IETF should steer clear
from with a wide angle.

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch wrote:
> <snip>
>
> I was a subscriber to both of the DNSO GA mailing lists and I do think
> the experiment worked for the most part.
As the list isn't active any more it might be useful to get input from
the members of the list that where then participating. Of course from
both the "I want to be on the main" and "on the full" lists. Off-list
replies for 'counting' are welcome.

> I've seen this a few times [..] Anything that can be done to improve
> participation is a good thing.
Exactly my opinion.

> PS...I've known Jefsey online since those early DNSO and IDNO days
> and whilst I don't always agree with him I respect his right to
> opinions.  I haven't followed his postings to other lists but haven't
> seen anything here I object to with regard to posting rights.
> I wouldn't like to see a blanket ban placed on his postings so a
> "full" list experiment would be a preference for me.
I didn't follow the lists where the real trouble was caused, but from
the comments I read and the reasoning behind them though I would, with a
main/full construct, move him to the full list so that he can still
voice his opinions but without undermining the rest of the process as I
do have a big problem with the fact that my mailbox, even though nicely
sorted, is getting flooded by a lot of policy mails and repeated
arguments instead of technical items.

Greets,
 Jeroen

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