Subject: do not feed the trolls

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 10:53:35 -0400

There are two ways to deal with noise or bad packets in a communications
system: eliminate the problem at the source or employ better filtering at
the receiver.  The former is often quite hard; if the network is
congested, sending messages back towards the source can increase
congestion problems.  Silently dropping the bad packets is often the best
strategy --- note that TCP, for example, doesn't send NAKs; similarly, ECN
relies on setting bits in existing packets, rather than sending new
messages.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 08:09:56 -0700

The problem with that entire philosophy and its public commentary Steve is
that it intentionally seeks to prevent some class of participation of some
group you have durogatorally labeled as trolls. So here is the deal - this
type of predjudicial conduct is VERY inappropriate for anyone sitting on a
WG as its chair, or in its Sr Management since it clearly compromises the
Standards Process by censoring dissenting commentary.

And BTW - I am still waiting for ANYONE here to tell me what specific rights
are required by the IETF to vet and advance standards? - and what rights are
needed outside the IETF for those processes or how the IETF will integrate
external commentary formally submitted for the participation in its
processes from external entities.

Todd Glassey

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 09:38:12 -0700

> There are two ways to deal with noise or bad packets in a  
> communications system: eliminate the problem at the source or  
> employ better filtering at the receiver.  The former is often quite  
> hard; if the network is congested, sending messages back towards  
> the source can increase congestion problems.  Silently dropping the  
> bad packets is often the best strategy --- note that TCP, for  
> example, doesn't send NAKs; similarly, ECN relies on setting bits  
> in existing packets, rather than sending new messages.

On May 24, 2006, at 8:09 AM, todd glassey wrote:
> The problem with that entire philosophy and its public commentary  
> Steve is that it intentionally seeks to prevent some class of  
> participation of some group you have durogatorally labeled as  
> trolls. So here is the deal - this type of predjudicial conduct is  
> VERY inappropriate for anyone sitting on a WG as its chair, or in  
> its Sr Management since it clearly compromises the Standards  
> Process by censoring dissenting commentary.

Todd:

Speaking as one who has had to deal with the "trolls", I need to  
counter this. The fact that somebody wants to talk about a topic  
doesn't mean that the topic is germane to the discussion group or  
beneficial to the community. We have a long history of certain people  
- some of whom are believed to not even exist but be pseudonyms for  
other people - doing their very best to argue topics of concern to  
them on every list the IETF runs and simply not accepting any  
viewpoint other than their own as valid. We have other people who  
seem to have no particular topic but on a wide variety of lists seem  
to get their jollies by posting disruptive notes simply to watch the  
carnage. We also have a large set of people who send calls for papers  
and other unrelated material to lists they don't belong on.

The simple fact is that the fact that you want to talk about  
something doesn't mean that the forum you are in is the appropriate  
place to do so. You don't have potty training discussions with your  
children while standing in front of a microphone, and you don't hold  
business discussions with one party in the presence of his or her  
competitors. You have the discussions you want to have in a forum  
appropriate to the topic you want to discuss. Same in the IETF.

Any standards organization needs to be able to manage its topics. On  
the IPR list, the topic is IETF IPR policy. On v6ops, which I chair,  
the topic is IPv6 operational matters. On idr, the topic is inter- 
domain routing and specifically BGP. When IPR topics come up on  
v6ops, I politely tell the person to discuss it in the IPR forum;  
when IPv6 operational matters apart from routing show up on idr, they  
send the commenting person to v6ops. And if the topic of whether  
ICANN is a good thing and "whom do I have to sue to get a TLD  
assigned to me so I can start printing money", we send them away from  
the IETF, as far as we can get them to go. Reason? IETF can't help  
them, and the topic they want to discuss is irrelevant to the topic  
set of the forum they are speaking in.

As Steve says, when a person refuses to permit a working group or  
other discussion forum address its assigned topics, and instead  
lowers the signal to noise ratio with postings, it is viewed as  
harassment of the community. There are two approaches. We have a  
defined means to exclude the rude person from a list for cause, and  
it has been exercised an a number of occasions. But there is a  
simpler approach, one that works reasonably well, that is in  
accordance with the robustness principle. We simply ignore the  
person, often by inserting a mail filter that drops their traffic at  
the receiver. Sooner or later, they get tired of shouting into the  
void and go away.

Your spam filter operates on the same model. You receive and discard  
the attack/commercial traffic, and eventually maybe somebody decides  
you don't want their product.

This conversation, for the record, is not on IPR. From my  
perspective, it is therefore not germane to this forum. I do not plan  
to reply further on it in this forum, to you or anyone else - and I  
would not recommend that anyone else follow it up in this forum. If  
you have a remaining issue, I would suggest that you take it up on  
the IETF list.

Fred