Hi, Magnus,
While not even dreaming of trying to speak for John, what I understood his
point to be was that our process is, and needs to be, more than a set of
rules.
You guys are going to get complaints (and you know that better than I do).
But you're going to get complaints whether there is a perfectly-crafted IESG
statement or not.
We've never recalled an AD, and we've never even had a public recall
petition presented to the community. Please feel free to use your judgement,
because the chances of that backfiring in any meaningful way are just about
zero.
On this particular topic, I've been really dismayed that we've gotten so far
into the weeds on what was obviously (to me) an attempt to do the right
thing - provide example domain names - that is now morphing into a set of
rules. You guys can keep tuning (and probably will keep tuning), but
- the principal justifications being advanced for why the problems you are
solving are real, seem very bogus, and
- you are spending valuable AD time trying to perfect a set of rules, so you
are trying to use your judgement now to avoid having to use your judgement
in the future.
Specifications are hard. Corner cases make them harder. Don't write detailed
specifications that you don't have to write. Asking authors to consider (!)
using example domain names as part of last call comments, or AD review, is
all that is required. Formally specifying when it is OK to use non-example
domain names is overkill.
<rant>
The "but what if a domain name is published in an RFC and gets picked up by
spammers?" concern wasn't even realistic in 2000. It's totally unrealistic
now. I challenge you guys to name any domain name that started getting spam
because it was published in an RFC (or Internet-Draft) after 2005, and
received no spam before publication.
If this was a real problem we'd stop publishing author e-mail addresses in
I-Ds and RFCs, and there's no chance we'll do that. So please take it as
read that 99-point-something percent of e-mail is going to be spam anyway.
</rant>
Thanks,
Spencer, who will now start drinking caffeine...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Westerlund" <magnus(_dot_)westerlund(_at_)ericsson(_dot_)com>
To: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
Cc: <Pasi(_dot_)Eronen(_at_)nokia(_dot_)com>; <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: Call for review of proposed IESG Statement on Examples
Hi John,
I have tried to write a statement that allows the IESG to use common
sense. However, the problem I have seen several times when the IESG
tries to use common sense in issues that comes up regularly is that some
people complains about not knowing about this and that we can't enforce
it because there are no written rules. Thus the draft statement is an
attempt to satisfy several different requirements:
- Provide motivation why there are issues with examples
- Provide some guidance on how to handle situations which aren't clear cut
- Be clear that this is something IESG do look at and authors need to
think about.
- Prevent complaints about late surprise and heavy hands when we are
applying what we think are common sense.
If you have a suggestion on how this better can be written up I am
interested.
When it comes to harm, I think we clearly have some cases where examples
can have really serious effects, configurations being what comes to
mind. When it comes to email addresses they are primarily an annoyance,
but I think any one of us would be might irritated to learn that the
suddenly started receive spam in large quantities because someone
published their address in example in an internet draft or RFC. I think
that this is as far as this goes and something any contributor to the
IETF unfortunately have to pay for their contribution in an open
organization with open access to its documents.
Best Regards
Magnus
--
Magnus Westerlund
IETF Transport Area Director & TSVWG Chair
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research EAB/TVM
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ericsson AB | Phone +46 8 4048287
Färögatan 6 | Fax +46 8 7575550
S-164 80 Stockholm, Sweden | mailto:
magnus(_dot_)westerlund(_at_)ericsson(_dot_)com
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