Re: Fully functional email address

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

On 20/06/2025 00:30, Paul Wouters wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2025, at 16:11, Stephen Farrell
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>>  Hiya,
>> 
>> As far as the subject line goes: I think we ought be accommodating 
>> if we can and not try insist that a few people who make odd
>> choices about email all have whatever we consider 'fully
>> functioning email' (but that we haven't documented;-).
> 
> I disagree.

Which is fine.

> If we tolerate it of a few people, we need to tolerate
> it from everyone and soon the ietf becomes a forum of autoresponders
> with ChatGPT challenges and fire hydrant puzzles talking to each
> other drowning out real contributions.

I don't find the above convincing. I've been involved in the
IETF for decades and there are only a handful of people with
such email setup oddities.

> 
> But in this case the auto responders adds legalese too:
> 
> I'm a rather primitive computer program, and I'm not sure whether
> your message is bulk mail.
> 
> If you reply to this notice, you are (1) acknowledging that
> [recipient] does not want to receive bulk mail; (2) confirming that
> your message is not part of a bulk mailing; and (3) agreeing to pay
> [recipient] $250 if your message is part of a bulk mailing.
> 
> When using my official dayjob email address, should I consult my
> company lawyer on this? If the cc: is an email list, is it bulk?
> Does mailman add a Bulk: header to the list copy they receive ?
> 
> There is also text in there that if the From: matches a certain
> email address than it is a forgery because the sender auto responder
> bot claims that address is not used for any mailing lists by its
> human, yet that’s exactly the email addresses that sent it to me, so
> if following this senders own autoresponder, I must treat their
> email as a forgery. Should I now make educational guesses as to
> whether which part of the auto responder is valid or ignorable ?
> 
> Offloading your spam problem to manual actions of others is wrong
> and it doesn’t scale for all of us. Therefore we should not tolerate
> it from anyone.>
> Adding legal requirements on email distributions of IETF mailing
> lists violates RFC 2026 and its successor process documents.
> 
>> I know of a handful of IETF participants (maybe 4-5) who make
>> useful contributions and where one has to jump through hoops to
>> have an email conversation. I think that's fine.
> 
> So I respectfully disagree that I need to accommodate these demands.
> Making useful contributions is not a waiver for bad (and costly)
> behaviour.

I don't think of it as bad behaviour, I think of it as quirky
and a bit quaint, and I definitely don't take it as a serious
legal thing. (It may be intended as such, or not, but I don't
really care:-)

>> In the current case, where such a person is appealing WG/AD
>> actions, then I think we should go even further to accommodate
>> them, because that is the right thing to do.
> 
> Someone claiming that we MUST follow our rules via form and legalese
> that violates our rules seems a rather ironic situation.

I do agree with you about the irony.

> Based on a combination of the above, I facilitated them by taking
> the effort to explain what minor changes they could do in a
> resubmitted email to conform to our process so I could process the
> appeal. Note that these minor changes did not include “must use a
> fully functional email address”, although I warned them that if the
> discussion would become deemed off topic, I would have no valid
> method to respond to their email offlist.
> 
> I will also note that this was the third appeal of this person in a
> very short time and that they appealed two AD decisions to the IESG
> and those two to the IAB, and all four appeals were denied. I would
> like to remind people of https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-
> iesg-on-appeals-of-iesg-and-area-director-actions-and-
> decisions-20071004/
> 
> “The IESG further wishes to highlight that the primary aim of the
> appeals mechanism set out there is to resolve conflicts and move the
> IETF as a whole towards consensus, and it urges all participants to
> approach them in that light”
> 
> Seeing the amount of effort spent by the Responsible ADs, the IESG
> and the IAB, I think we can ask such a person to avoid any ambiguity
> about Note Well by sending one more email to the Responsible AD, and
> that furthermore the community had already been immensely
> accommodating and we have seen little to no good will in return.

Without commenting on the recent appeals, yes, an appeal from
someone with a quirky mail setup makes things harder for those
dealing with the appeal. It's still my opinion that those who
are deciding appeals ought to go out of their way to make it
easier for the appellant, even if they behave oddly with email.

ISTM the point of appeals is to improve the probability that we
end up doing the right thing, and the more we impose formalities
on appellants, the more that goal is harmed, even if in a few
cases the "formality" is a more typical email setup.

Note: I'm not commenting above on the aspect of the recent appeals,
where people seemed to be disagreeing about whether the appeal text
was <this pdf> or <that html>, or was the same or modified, which
is a different issue (though also ISTM involving irony and quite
quirky behaviour;-)

Cheers,
S.


> 
> Paul