Subject: IESG Response to JFC Morfin's appeal regarding suspension of posting privileges to the ietf-languages mailing list

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:09:26 -0500

The IESG has received a request (see
http://www.ietf.org/IESG/APPEALS/morfin-appeal-ietf-languages-list.txt) 
from JFC Morfin to overturn the suspension of his posting privileges to the
ietf-languages mailing list. Since this appeal is similar in one critical aspect
to a previous appeal overturned by the IAB for the lack of IESG explanation,
this appeal will describe in more detail the process by which the IESG reached
its conclusion.

The IETF's procedures are aimed at a fundamental goal of making the
standards process work, but they will never cover every possible
circumstance. Where there is no enumerated procedure, the traditional
practice of the IETF and the reasonable application of good sense
is expected for managing situations. If that were not permitted, the
IETF would grind to a halt in process discussions.

There is no enumerated procedure at this point for managing non-WG mailing
lists. That may change in the future, but until it does list managers must
be guided by traditional IETF practice and by their responsibility to
manage the lists in the interest of the IETF's fundamental goals.
In this instance, Harald Alvestrand set out a process by which he would
manage the ietf-languages list. He did so publicly, in advance of the
application of that process, and by pointing to a documented process
which had achieved IETF consensus as a model.

The IESG believes that this was a reasonable way to achieve the
goals of following the traditional practice of the IETF and judging
what actions would be considered reasonable by the community.

After reviewing the list traffic leading up to this suspension, the
IESG upholds the suspension of J-F. C. Morfin from the IETF languages list, as
we concur with the judgement of its list manager.

To clarify two additional points raised by this appeal, the IESG
confirms that the list [email-masked] and the
[email-masked] are equivalent, as
one is simply a redirect of the other. This mailing list practice
does not affect the role the list plays in the IETF. We also confirm that the
IETF language reviewer remains Michael Everson.

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