Subject: RE: WGTOOLS BOF at IETF 53

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 15:15:01 -0500

Bernard,

Although I have plenty of my own ideas on mailing lists, I will refrain from
writing them up here and just suggest that this is a tremendous rat hole. If
you want to get anything done on management of drafts, which I thought was
the main topic, I suggest barring or severely limiting discussion mailing
list management.

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Casner [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 2:55 PM
To: Bernard Aboba
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: WGTOOLS BOF at IETF 53

Bernard,

Does the WG mailing list based on ietf.org qualify as a tool
appropriate for discussion in this BOF?  I would like to see some
improvements in the mailing list management features so that it works
better with less overhead.

We have changed the AVT list to member-only-posting in order to
control spam.  When non-members post, the list admins (the WG
co-chairs) get a message asking for approval, but nothing is sent to
the poster.  This works, in that it avoids the wrath of open-list
advocates, but what it means is that admins are forced into the role
of manual spam filters.  We don't even get to set up procmail filters
to help.  And, the admins must be attentive to the approval messages
in order to minimize delay for valid messages from non-members.

I would like to see three changes made to the IETF mailman system:

1.  Add a feature to allow members of any ietf.org mailing list to
    post to a WG list if the WG list admin so selects.  This keeps the
    list open to cross-posting without having to subscribe.

2.  Allow the WG list admin to select a mode where posters who are not
    approved get an auto-reply asking them to subscribe, and allow the
    WG list admin to edit the content of that message.  This is
    actually an advantage for non-member posters in that they will
    know right away that their message did not get through rather than
    having to wait for the admin to take approval action.  Some people
    have been offended by these auto-reply messages in the past, but
    allowing ietf-list cross posting should keep many of those
    potentially offended parties from seeing the auto-replies, and
    allowing the WG admin to edit the content of the auto-reply
    provides an opportunity for the wording to be made appropriate.

3.  Change the member-only-posting to be based on the From: field
    rather than the Sender: field.  Apparently it was decided to use
    the Sender field when mailman was set up because this was
    considered stronger protection against spam.  However, spammers
    can set both fields with equal ease.  The problem is that people
    who use aliases to join mailing lists either have to sign up with
    their non-aliased address or the list admins have to manually
    approve the member's mail or add the member's alias to the
    approved non-member list.

I have discussed all these issues with Stanley, but his response in
each case is that these are not problems because the list admin can
handle it.  Yes, but we need to reduce the load on the wg admins who
are often the chairs.  With these features in place, the load (or
requirement for attentiveness) would be reduced significantly.

Adding features 1 and 2 would probably require some programming.
Hence, if some programming resources might become available and if
part of the purpose of the BOF is to determine how such resources
should be allocated, then mailing list improvements might qualify.

							-- Steve

---

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 14:53:33 -0800 (PST)

Agreed. The primary focus of the BOF will be on tools for managing of
issues relating to drafts, such as Bugzilla and RT.