The more I've been thinking about this the less comfortable
I am with how this was executed. I have no disagreement
whatsoever with removing this person's posting privileges.
But, I have a huge problem with Jordi's statement:
"As Sergeant-at-arms, I agree with other previous
postings and believe that anonymous posting is not
tolerable in the IETF mail exploders."
Clearly, there are non-trivial problems around making decisions
on the basis of something sort of like identity in unauthenticated
email. We don't *really* know who other people are - we tend to
assume that they are who they say they are and evaluate their
credibility (or not) on things like content, reputation, past
performance, etc. The problem with
mars(_dot_)techno(_dot_)cat(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com
isn't that he (and since we're pretty sure we know who this is,
we'll stick with masculine pronouns) has an email address
that doesn't look like a name (although his name could have
been Mars Techno Cat, as unlikely as that is). The problem
is that he had no prior history of posting -as that name-
and posted nothing but off-topic rants and personal attacks.
I would hope that the attacks would be sufficient to have his
posting privileges revoked and that having an unfamiliar
email address would not be sufficient.
Additionally, let me suggest that finding anonymous posts
"not tolerable" is inconsistent with the perpass discussions
and concerns expressed *here* about privacy.
We want accountability in our documents and that means knowing
that the people who contribute to our work 1) have technical
substance, and 2) are having their comments and text evaluated
by other people of technical substance. It does not necessarily
mean knowing their names or identities. In many discussions
about privacy and about whether or not various cryptographic
technologies have been deliberately weakened by some US
government agency, there have been repeated assertion that
open processes and aggressive review provide protection
against that sort of problem. That ought to apply here, as
well.
Anonymity is not a problem. Behaving badly is a problem.
I really never want to see someone's ejection justified on
the basis of their putative "anonymity" again. I am not
arguing that mars(_dot_)techno(_dot_)cat(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com ought to be
allowed
anywhere near an IETF mailing list but that the reason that
was given for throwing him off was not correct. We should
be working to protect anonymity and privacy, not punishing it.
Melinda