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Re: Sergeant at arms: please deal with mars(_dot_)techno(_dot_)cat(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com

2013-10-22 14:17:15
Strangely enough, I concur too.

If you look at my original complaint to Jordi, anonymity was not mentioned.
I only raised it when asked  why I requested action. And I agree: anonymity
in itself is not a problem.

Anonymity + irrelevance is a problem, in my opinion.

Regards
   Brian

On 23/10/2013 07:50, John C Klensin wrote:
Although I usually object to doing this, +1.  Well stated and I
strongly concur.

    john


--On Tuesday, October 22, 2013 10:41 -0800 Melinda Shore
<melinda(_dot_)shore(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:

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






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