Re: IESG Statement on Spam Control on IETF Mailing Lists

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

+1 to Henrik's comments. I don't think the two MUSTs
that he comments on are algorithmically possible.

    Brian

On 2008-04-15 08:25, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2008-04-14 17:39 IESG Secretary said the following:
>> The following principles apply to spam control on IETF mailing lists:
>>
>> * IETF mailing lists MUST provide spam control.
>> * Such spam control SHOULD track accepted practices used on the Internet.
>> * IETF mailing lists MUST provide a mechanism for legitimate technical
>> participants to bypass moderation, challenge-response, or other techniques
>> that would interfere with a prompt technical debate on the mailing list
>> without requiring such participants to receive list traffic.
> 
> Umm -- I think I understand what this *intends* to say, but I'm not sure.
> 
> What I'm reading it as actually saying, though, is that a poster who
> thinks he is a legitimate technical participant is to be provided means of
> *bypassing* moderation.
> 
> A means of bypassing challenge-response could be to send a mail to one
> of the list admins to forward to the list, but since moderation is (at
> least normally) provided by the list admins, and essentially any human
> who receives a message and is asked to forward it to the list will have
> to judge whether the message is relevant and appropriate, which constitutes
> moderation as I understand it, the statement above seems to imply that
> there has to be some way, untouched by a human making any kind of evaluation,
> to force a message to be posted to a list???
> 
> It would be rather helpful for an explanation or rationale to be provided
> for a statement such as the above, which to me reads as a very categorical
> statement that no kind of challenge-response, moderation, or other
> reasonable guard against spam can be put in place without extraordinary
> efforts at providing means to *force* a circumvention of the same.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that the third bullet above isn't intended to almost
> completely nullify the first bullet, but I'm actually not sure how to
> set up anything but painstaking manual inspection of every spam in order
> to adhere to the third bullet as written.  None of the mechanisms currently
> available, including TMDA, spam-assassin, and blocking of posts from
> non-subscribers followed by manual inspection seems to fulfil this as
> I read it, which leaves me at a loss.
> 
>> * IETF mailing lists MUST provide a mechanism for legitimate technical
>> participants to determine if an attempt to post was dropped as apparent
>> spam.
> 
> Again, an umm...  I'm not sure I'm aware of an available technical solution
> which out-of-the-box will ensure this is followed, without at the same time
> resulting in a deluge of back-scatter.  If there was a SHOULD here, I could
> imagine working over a bit of time at setting up Mailman to drop-and-archive,
> but currently the solution which comes to mind is to reject, which (I believe)
> potentially will result in backscatter and more work and/or junk for the list
> admin.
> 
> Overall, I'm slightly surprised at how categorical several of the statements
> above are, without providing rationale and background information which would
> have made it possible to fully understand them.  It seems as if they are
> presented as decrees from on-high which have to be followed even if they
> aren't understood to be sensible or implementable...
> 
>> * The Internet draft editor, RFC editor, IESG secretary, IETF chair and
>> IANA MUST be able to post to IETF mailing lists. The relevant identity
>> information for these roles will be added to any white-list mechanism used
>> by an IETF mailing list.
>> * There MUST be a mechanism to complain that a message was inappropriately
>> blocked.
>>
>> The realization of these principles is expected to change over time.
>> List moderators, working group chairs and area directors are expected to
>> interpret these principles reasonably and within the context of IETF
>> policy and philosophy.
>>
>> This supercedes a previous IESG statement on this topic:
>> http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/mail-submit-policy.txt
>> That statement contains justification and implementation advice that may
>> be helpful to anyone applying these principles.
>>
>> A separate IESG statement applies to moderation of IETF mailing lists:
>> http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/moderated-lists.txt
> 
> 
> 	Henrik
> _______________________________________________
> IETF mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
> 
_______________________________________________
IETF mailing list
[e-mail]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf