Subject: Response to the Appeal by JFC Morfin dated 2006-05-17

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:18:10 -0400

Appeal by JFC Morfin dated 2006-05-17
=====================================

http://www.ietf.org/IESG/APPEALS/iesg-pr-appeal-05-17-2006.pdf

The IESG understands this to be an appeal against its decision to
approve a PR-action against Mr Morfin, announced on 2006-03-18 at
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg02313.html

As we understand them, the grounds of appeal are:

1. That the IESG could not make a decision as the decision to Last Call 
the PR-action was under appeal at the time the decision was made.

The IESG finds nothing in RFC 2026 or RFC 3683 to suggest that
appeals have inherent suspensive effect.

2. That the IESG partly based the decision on a prior suspension 
that was voided (by IAB decision) prior to approval of the PR-action.

Note that it was voided only because RFC 3934 is written narrowly
to apply only to WG mailing lists. See
http://www.iab.org/appeals/2006-01-31-jefsey-response.html

RFC 3683 is not specific to WG mailing lists, so
the IAB decision is beside the point.

3. The PR-decision was not properly announced. The short coming 
of the announcement is that it did not include the vote record.

The IESG is not obliged to make decisions by voting, although it 
did so in this case. The voting record was not included in the 
announcement, but is indicated in the IESG minutes for 2006-03-16.
Note that the form of words used records who voted against or
abstained, but fails to state the implied fact that all
other ADs voted for the PR-action.

The IESG does not agree that this in any way invalidates
its decision.

4. That the grounds for approving the PR-action are not valid 
as there was no IETF consensus to disrupt. If there was no consensus
to disrupt then RFC 3683 is not applicable. Arguments for why this 
is true in regards to ietf-languages and LTRU are:

[email-masked] is not a valid argument as:
- The IESG has not addressed the recommendations from IAB.

This is factually incorrect. See
http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/statement-disruptive-posting.txt

- There is no consensus as this is a reviewer's list, and only operates 
as a source of advice to the reviewer. Thus based on the list's modus 
operandi RFC 3683 does not apply.

This is an interesting argument from a formal point of view.
However, the fact that an IANA Expert Reviewer is not formally
called upon by RFC 2434 to judge consensus does not mean that he
or she will not prefer to obtain consensus if possible. In fact,
RFC 2434 makes it clear that the expert is there to avoid IANA 
having to make a consensus judgement:

  "In addition, the IANA cannot participate in
   all of these mailing lists and cannot determine if or when such
   discussions reach consensus.  Therefore, the IANA cannot allow
   general mailing lists to fill the role of providing definitive
   recommendations regarding a registration question.
   ...
   The designated expert can
   initiate and coordinate as wide a review of an assignment request as
   may be necessary to evaluate it properly." 

It is clear to the IESG that the scope of RFC 3683 was intended
to cover this type of case.

Mr Morfin also argues that RFC 3683 does not apply to his alleged
disruption of the LTRU WG list as consensus was achieved, despite 
alleged attempts to prevent consensus by opponents to JFC's position.

The IESG does not find this argument relevant; the point is not whether
consensus was eventually achieved, but whether Mr Morfin's postings
made it unduly difficult to achieve.

5. In addition Mr Morfin argues that RFC 3683 does not apply as there 
was no failure to modify behavior following earlier suspensions. 
At the time of the IESG decision the situation was:
- the contentious documents had achieved consensus.
- LTRU had achieved consensus on other documents.
- JFC had left the ietf-languages list
- JFC had de facto left also the LTRU list.

The IESG cannot admit this argument. There is inevitably a delay
between the moment when a PR-action is initiated and the moment when
it is decided. The Last Call for the PR-action pointed to a pattern
of alleged disruption *after* multiple warnings and suspensions,
and it is the status at the moment of the Last Call that is
relevant.

The IESG does not believe other matters raised in the appeal are
relevant to whether the PR-action decision was taken correctly.

The appeal is rejected.

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