[Asrg] Soundness of silence

[Alessandro Vesely <[e-mail]>]

I've only been subscribed to this list for 18 months, so you will 
forgive me if I haven't yet grasped how it works. I've been receiving 
spam for much longer than that, and lazily waited for someone to reel 
off the rules to kill that plague. It never happened. Why? When I 
subscribed, I thought I'd at least understand that...

Understanding this list's dynamics is not easier. As in many lists, 
messages that start a new thread are relatively rare. I don't have 
message-per-thread statistics, but usually there are many responses. 
Some messages get no response; for example, Frank sent a message on 
Spam Statistics on April 28, and nobody answered, AFAIK.

In particular, I'm puzzled as to why I got no answer to my yesterday's 
message. A previous message by Amir, DNS-based Email Sender 
Authentication Mechanisms: a Critical Review, had several responses. 
The subject of my I-D is almost the same, an SMTP extension to manage 
those authentication mechanisms. However, I had exactly zero response. 
The same happened for a similar message I sent on May 25. I cannot 
believe it is by chance. Since it happened twice in a row, there has 
to be a sound reason.

Possible guesses:

* Because nobody is interested in the subject.
Already ruled out: it is the same subject of Amir's paper (rDNS, SPF, 
DKIM, and the like.) How come nobody is interested?

* Because nobody has the time to retrieve the I-D from the web.
Doesn't work, by the same argument nobody would have read Amir's paper.

* Because it is poorly written.
Well, my English is not that good, but used to be readable. Also, at 
first I thought an I-D's introduction should only give a hint at 
interpreting the behavior described in the rest of the text, in order 
to let readers draw the consequences more freely. Now I've changed it 
to describe the use model. I admit that's confusing, but not to the 
point of not discussing it: in facts, I've discussed it with a handful 
of people already, but never on a list. Hm... _that_'s puzzling.

* Because it is written by me.
Naah... paranoid.

* Because nobody is interested in yet another anti-spam tool.
I could understand that. But this does not explain why everyone 
resisted to the temptation of telling me why I'm an asshole.

* Because someone wrote privately to everyone banning public answers.
Unbelievable, paranoid, I don't think would ever have worked as intended.

* Because vhlo is not endorsed by John.
Not really. John himself told me to write to the list. Possibly, he 
did not answer because he wanted to see if anybody _else_ was interested.

* Because it is not endorsed by the IESG.
Uh? What is the IESG?

* Because the referred paper is an I-D.
Hmm... this list has been discussing I-Ds before. However, it may be 
that a public message about an I-D would have be classified as rough 
dissension and thereby commit the IETF to do something with it, such 
as assigning it a "dead" state. I'm not much into the standardization 
process, but such a rule would seem too bureaucratically silly to be 
operative.


Yet, it happens every time. I bet I can reproduce that behavior 
consistently, look at this: "Hey, I've written take 3". See any 
response? No. So, why?

FWIW, and for your convenience, I paste below the original text that 
inspired the title of this rant.


Hello darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
left it's seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains, within the sounds of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone,
narrow streets of cobblestone
'neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
when my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
split the night... and touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
ten thousand people maybe more
people talking without speaking
people hearing without listening
people writing songs that voices never share
noone dare, disturb the sound of silence

Fools said I you do not know,
silence like a cancer grows,
hear my words that I might teach you
take my arms that I might reach you
but my words, like silent raindrops fell...
and echoed the will of silence

And the people bowed and prayed,
to the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
in the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls
and whisper the sounds of silence.