"too many notes" -- a modest proposal

[Michael Thomas]

It seems to me that a lot of what causes working group lists to
melt down is simply the volume of traffic -- usually with plenty
of off-topic banter, or exchanges of dubious value, with the resulting
conjestive collapse of our wetware buffering. On good days, the
drop algorithm may be more sophisticated than tail drops; on
bad days...

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".

in all modesty, Mike

[Steve Silverman]

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. How difficult this
would be to implement on the message exploders is another question.

Steve Silverman

-----Original Message-----
Michael Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 3:26 PM
To: IETF Discussion
Subject: "too many notes" -- a modest proposal
It seems to me that a lot of what causes working group lists to
melt down is simply the volume of traffic -- usually with plenty
of off-topic banter, or exchanges of dubious value, with
the resulting
conjestive collapse of our wetware buffering. On good days, the
drop algorithm may be more sophisticated than tail drops; on
bad days...
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".
in all modesty, Mike
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Andy Bierman]

Post by Steve Silverman
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. How difficult this
would be to implement on the message exploders is another question.

I do not share your regulatory zeal.
As a WG Chair and WG participant, I have enough rules to follow already.
The last thing I want to do is count messages and bytes, and enforce
draconian rules like this.

Post by Steve Silverman
Steve Silverman

Andy

Post by Steve Silverman

-----Original Message-----
Michael Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 3:26 PM
To: IETF Discussion
Subject: "too many notes" -- a modest proposal
It seems to me that a lot of what causes working group lists to
melt down is simply the volume of traffic -- usually with plenty
of off-topic banter, or exchanges of dubious value, with
the resulting
conjestive collapse of our wetware buffering. On good days, the
drop algorithm may be more sophisticated than tail drops; on
bad days...
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".
in all modesty, Mike
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Andy Bierman
I do not share your regulatory zeal.
As a WG Chair and WG participant, I have enough rules to follow already.
The last thing I want to do is count messages and bytes, and enforce
draconian rules like this.

But counting messages and bytes happens to be something that can be
easily automated, and it can be applied with absolute consistency to
everyone, without prejudice. Of course, those are exactly the reasons
why many people would reject the idea--they want to keep other people
from posting, but they also fear being prevented from posting
themselves.

[Andy Bierman]

Post by Anthony G. Atkielski

Post by Andy Bierman
I do not share your regulatory zeal.
As a WG Chair and WG participant, I have enough rules to follow already.
The last thing I want to do is count messages and bytes, and enforce
draconian rules like this.

But counting messages and bytes happens to be something that can be
easily automated, and it can be applied with absolute consistency to
everyone, without prejudice. Of course, those are exactly the reasons
why many people would reject the idea--they want to keep other people
from posting, but they also fear being prevented from posting
themselves.

I think you missed my point.
I should have said "enforce or abide by draconian rules".
Automating the process is even worse.
Then stupid scripts disrupt WG activity on a regular basis.
Inappropriate mailing list use should be dealt with by the
WG Chair(s) in a more diplomatic manner.


Andy

Post by Anthony G. Atkielski
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Andy Bierman
I think you missed my point.
I should have said "enforce or abide by draconian rules".
Automating the process is even worse.
Then stupid scripts disrupt WG activity on a regular basis.
Inappropriate mailing list use should be dealt with by the
WG Chair(s) in a more diplomatic manner.

Well, one option is to stop trying to restrict access to lists to
begin with. The problem with having a human being make the decision
is that human beings are notoriously biased.

[Andy Bierman]

Post by Anthony G. Atkielski

Post by Andy Bierman
I think you missed my point.
I should have said "enforce or abide by draconian rules".
Automating the process is even worse.
Then stupid scripts disrupt WG activity on a regular basis.
Inappropriate mailing list use should be dealt with by the
WG Chair(s) in a more diplomatic manner.

Well, one option is to stop trying to restrict access to lists to
begin with. The problem with having a human being make the decision
is that human beings are notoriously biased.

If we did this, our mailing lists would be bombarded with SPAM
from non-subscribers.

There is an appeals process (of that we are too painfully aware)
that can be used for people who are told by a WG Chair that
they are using the mailing list in an inappropriate manner, and still
insist on continuing their behavior.

I have found that only the worst managers deal with
bad apples by burdening the entire group with oppressive rules.

Andy

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Andy Bierman
If we did this, our mailing lists would be bombarded with SPAM
from non-subscribers.

Then accept e-mail only from subscribers.

Post by Andy Bierman
There is an appeals process (of that we are too painfully aware)
that can be used for people who are told by a WG Chair that
they are using the mailing list in an inappropriate manner, and still
insist on continuing their behavior.

It's still subject to human bias.

Post by Andy Bierman
I have found that only the worst managers deal with
bad apples by burdening the entire group with oppressive rules.

I agree. But managers who apply oppressive rules selectively are just
as bad.

[Spencer Dawkins]

Just for the participants who are enjoying the current discussion on this
list (for some value of "enjoying") -

One of the things that I find most helpful is when people who could be
replying posting-by-posting within a thread stop, take a deep breath, and
ask themselves, "rather than making my point in response to a number of
different posts, what am I really trying to say?"

The same number of bytes, in one coherent message, with some thought given
to organization, is a lot more helpful.

John Klensin is especially good at this, but he is not the only one (thank
goodness).

And, just for another hint, John has been able to extract almost verbatim
from his postings into Internet Drafts, which also say what he is trying to
say in a coherent and organized way. Submitting Internet Drafts is The Only
Way our BCPs are going to change, unless we actually enjoy the IESG "making
it up as we go along" as the IETF process.

At least one IESG member is receptive enough to the idea of RFC 3933 process
experiments that he is writing up proposals himself. If you actually care
whether anything changes, that's what you can do, to make a difference.

Thanks,

Spencer (co-author of RFC 3933, which started out as a John Klensin e-mail,
and is now a BCP)

[Scott Kitterman]

Post by Steve Silverman
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. How difficult this
would be to implement on the message exploders is another question.
Steve Silverman

This rule was in place during MARID, although there were no technical
restrictions, just reminders from the chairs.

It seemed to me at the time that the rule had the least effect on those that
needed it most (myself included at times).

Scott Kitterman

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Steve Silverman
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.

Bzzzt! No, that ruins the whole idea. It's just censorship by
another name.

If three messages is enough for responsible contributions by one
person, it's enough for responsible contributions from anyone. If
it's not, then the limit must be higher. But the limit has to be the
same for everyone.

As I've already said, this idea is too fair to work. Nobody wants
fairness; most people want total freedom for themselves and severe
restrictions on everyone else--censorship, in other words. A limit
that everyone would be forced to respect would be rejected by the very
same people who cry out for limits.

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

We had a discussion on this back in May 2003, and I created a mailing list
for it called "ietf-moderation" - you can subscribe to the list by
http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-moderation, or the usual
-request spiel.

Total traffic seems to have been 3 messages in May and 9 messages in
December, so it would be a quick job to review.

The list's still available to continue the discussion.....

Post by Michael Thomas
It seems to me that a lot of what causes working group lists to
melt down is simply the volume of traffic -- usually with plenty
of off-topic banter, or exchanges of dubious value, with the resulting
conjestive collapse of our wetware buffering. On good days, the
drop algorithm may be more sophisticated than tail drops; on
bad days...
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".
in all modesty, Mike
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

[Douglas Otis]

Post by Harald Tveit Alvestrand
We had a discussion on this back in May 2003, and I created a
mailing list for it called "ietf-moderation" - you can subscribe to
the list by http://eikenes.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-
moderation, or the usual -request spiel.
Total traffic seems to have been 3 messages in May and 9 messages
in December, so it would be a quick job to review.
The list's still available to continue the discussion.....

I suspect that at the moment, I am the guilty party in consuming
bandwidth on the DKIM list. With the aggressive schedule, the
immediate desire was to get issues listed, corrected, and in a form
found acceptable. I initially attempted to bundle these issues and
was requested to make separate posts. Each of these posts then
resulted in an exchange of two or three subsequent exchanges offering
corrections and guidance, with follow-on. I don't expect this to
continue, and my apologies if this has created any difficulty. I
will make an effort to slow down.

-Doug

[Eliot Lear]

Post by Douglas Otis
I suspect that at the moment, I am the guilty party in consuming
bandwidth on the DKIM list. With the aggressive schedule, the
immediate desire was to get issues listed, corrected, and in a form
found acceptable.

Without going into all the reasons why here, I asked Doug to separate
out issues into separate messages.

Eliot

[Brian E Carpenter]

Post by Eliot Lear

Post by Douglas Otis
I suspect that at the moment, I am the guilty party in consuming
bandwidth on the DKIM list. With the aggressive schedule, the
immediate desire was to get issues listed, corrected, and in a form
found acceptable.

Without going into all the reasons why here, I asked Doug to separate
out issues into separate messages.

Exactly. If a WG group is discussing a dozen separate issues in parallel,
an active participant can easily send several dozen *constructive*
messages in a day. Our problem with disruptive messages can't be solved
by counting bytes.

Brian

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Brian E Carpenter
Exactly. If a WG group is discussing a dozen separate issues in parallel,
an active participant can easily send several dozen *constructive*
messages in a day. Our problem with disruptive messages can't be solved
by counting bytes.

Set a rolling monthly quota, then. Nobody constantly sends a long
stream of consistently productive messages.

[John Levine]

Post by Anthony G. Atkielski
Set a rolling monthly quota, then. Nobody constantly sends a long
stream of consistently productive messages.

We've certainly been made aware of that.

R's,
John

[Theodore Ts'o]

Post by Anthony G. Atkielski

Post by Brian E Carpenter
Exactly. If a WG group is discussing a dozen separate issues in parallel,
an active participant can easily send several dozen *constructive*
messages in a day. Our problem with disruptive messages can't be solved
by counting bytes.

Set a rolling monthly quota, then. Nobody constantly sends a long
stream of consistently productive messages.

Anthony,

As a gentle suggestion from one of the Sargeant-At-Arms. If
you were to keep track of how many messages you have been posting
compared to others, I think you would find that you are one of the
more prolific posters on this thread. And if you were to stop, take a
breath, and post a single message comprising your thoughts on all of
the messages that you have been reading, and were to self-impose your
own quota on the number of messages you have posted, it would very
likely make the IETF list a more pleasant place to converse.

This is a discpline that I would recommend to all who are
posting to the IETF list... .but given that you are one of the more
prolific as of late and you seem to have suggested the quota idea
without any idea of the potential irony of that statement, I would
like to commend to you your own suggestion.

As others have suggested, if you were take as your model the
posting frequency and the thoughtfulness of John Klensin's posts, it
would be hard for you to go wrong.

Regards,

- Ted

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Theodore Ts'o
As a gentle suggestion from one of the Sargeant-At-Arms. If
you were to keep track of how many messages you have been posting
compared to others, I think you would find that you are one of the
more prolific posters on this thread.

And if you were to look at the total number of posts over the past
three years, I think you would find that I hardly ever post to this
list at all.

However, I receive thousands of messages from the list, most of which
are of no interest to me, and many of which don't even seem to be
related to the nominal purpose of the list ... and I do not complain,
nor do I suggest that others limit their posting for my convenience.
I understand the value of forums in which freedom of expression is
permitted, and I do not apply double standards.

Post by Theodore Ts'o
And if you were to stop, take a breath, and post a single message
comprising your thoughts on all of the messages that you have been
reading, and were to self-impose your own quota on the number of
messages you have posted, it would very likely make the IETF list a
more pleasant place to converse.

I don't impose a quota. Quotas are suggestions that others have made,
not me. I only suggested that quotas might be the least of several
evils, for people who cannot resist the temptation to attempt to
silence others with whom they disagree.

If you were to stop and reflect before posting personal attacks on
other people, you, too, could make the list a more pleasant place to
converse. However, unlike you, I shall not attempt to tell you what
to post or not post.

Post by Theodore Ts'o
This is a discpline that I would recommend to all who are
posting to the IETF list ...

But not one that you are willing to put into practice, apparently.

Post by Theodore Ts'o
... but given that you are one of the more
prolific as of late and you seem to have suggested the quota idea
without any idea of the potential irony of that statement, I would
like to commend to you your own suggestion.

I didn't suggest any form of censorship. I only try to make
suggestions that limit the damages of censorship, since I know that
some people can't live without it.

Post by Theodore Ts'o
As others have suggested, if you were take as your model the
posting frequency and the thoughtfulness of John Klensin's posts, it
would be hard for you to go wrong.

If you were to take as your model my total abstinence from ad hominem,
you wouldn't have written your post at all.

[Michael Thomas]

Post by Brian E Carpenter

Post by Eliot Lear

Post by Douglas Otis
I suspect that at the moment, I am the guilty party in consuming
bandwidth on the DKIM list. With the aggressive schedule, the
immediate desire was to get issues listed, corrected, and in a form
found acceptable.

Without going into all the reasons why here, I asked Doug to separate
out issues into separate messages.

Exactly. If a WG group is discussing a dozen separate issues in parallel,
an active participant can easily send several dozen *constructive*
messages in a day. Our problem with disruptive messages can't be solved
by counting bytes.

Is there really a working group that can realistically deal
with a dozen separate issues in parallel? I know that when I
see a dozen or so issues posted to a mailing list, my eyes
glaze...

Mike

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Michael Thomas
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".

Sounds fine to me ... but I know it would never fly. Some people
consider themselves "more equal than others" and would object as soon
as their "important" posts were rejected, no matter how much traffic
they were generating. And they'd point to the occasional posters and
insist that their infrequent posts were far less worthy of inclusion
on the list. And so on. In other words, it would be fair, but
fairness is not what most people want. They want total freedom for
themselves, but heavy restrictions for everyone else.

[Noel Chiappa]

Nobody constantly sends a long stream of consistently productive
messages.

The irony in you, of all people, making this statement is a little stunning -
to the point that one really does start to wonder exactly what could be
behind your posting behaviour. Several possibilities come to mind, of
course...

Well, there will always be more good engineers.

In that case, there's no harm in the rest of us deciding we don't need the
dubious "assistance" of few of the most troublesome, and least productive, is
there?

Noel

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Noel Chiappa
In that case, there's no harm in the rest of us deciding we don't need the
dubious "assistance" of few of the most troublesome, and least productive, is
there?

Actually there is, because there's very little correlation between
being "troublesome" on a mailing list and being a bad engineer. This
is particularly true when any failure to agree with the majority is
interpreted as "trouble." People who disagree are usually the motors
of change, and therefore of problem resolution. Restricting
discussion to those who wish only to maintain conformity and consensus
in a happy little community makes for very little "trouble," but also
eliminates any real purpose for the discussion forum.

Maybe anyone who engages in personal attacks should be banned. What
do you think?

[Gray, Eric]

Anthony,

...
-->
--> Set a rolling monthly quota, then. Nobody constantly sends a long
--> stream of consistently productive messages.
-->
-->

This is simply not true. All one needs to do is publish a
crucial document relevant to the working groups charter,
and important to understanding the rest of the work, and
one will be inundated with questions.

The most productive way to deal with questions in a working
group is to answer them publicly on the list. To avoid the
trip wire, however, most people woul simply answer specific
questions off-line. That would be BAD.

Debate on work in progress is critical, must be in public
at least much of the time and will usually involve a small
number of people - authors in particular - who simply must
participate. On several occasions, I have seen productive
debate on critical drafts take more than a month in some
working groups.

--
Eric

[Anthony G. Atkielski]

Post by Gray, Eric
This is simply not true. All one needs to do is publish a
crucial document relevant to the working groups charter,
and important to understanding the rest of the work, and
one will be inundated with questions.

Then maybe message traffic is not a reliable indicator of
"disturbance"; in which case those here who attempt to associate the
two are either naïve or disingenuous.

Post by Gray, Eric
Debate on work in progress is critical, must be in public
at least much of the time and will usually involve a small
number of people - authors in particular - who simply must
participate.

So why is it bad when a small number of people consistently disagree
and post many messages in consequence? How can you have critical
public debate without lots of message traffic and disagreement?