Re: IESG Statement on surprised authors

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

On May 31, 2015 12:30 PM, "John C Klensin" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
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> --On Sunday, May 31, 2015 09:17 -0800 Melinda Shore
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
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> > On 5/31/15 9:04 AM, John Levine wrote:
> >> We do automatically notify authors when new drafts are
> >> posted, which should usually alert surprised authors to the
> >> problem.
> >
> > It's probably worth noting that alerting people suffers from
> > one of the same weaknesses as requiring approval from all
> > authors, which is that it's easy to create throwaway or
> > spoofed email addresses.  That said, I think this is the best
> > approach.  If it eventually turn out that bogus email
> > addresses are being used to work around the notifications,
> > that can be dealt with.  But for the time being notification
> > can at least allows someone to object if they receive a notice
> > that a draft has been published with their name on it.
>
> Yes.  Listing someone as an author who didn't want to be so
> listed could conceivably be a misunderstanding rather than a
> malicious act.  It may be reasonable to treat it as such (as the
> draft statement and default "tombstone" remedy, IMO, essentially
> does).

The more I hear about the cases I know about, the more most sound like
misunderstandings.

So, yes.

> While we've never discussed what to do about the more extreme
> cases and I hope we never have to, at the point that someone
> starts creating bogus email addresses or otherwise does things
> whose only purpose could be to frustrate notification
> mechanisms, it will usually be quite clear that deliberately
> deceitful behavior was intended.  Should such practices occur
> often enough to be of concern, the IETF would be justified in
> treating the behavior more harshly than "merely" taking a
> document down.  For example, it might be in order to modify RFC
> 3683 to deny I-D posting rights or otherwise remove a person
> from the IETF whose behavior was a threat to the community.
> But, again, I hope we never have to reach the point where that
> discussion is necessary.
>
>     john
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>