RE: WG-C RULES was Re: [wg-c] Short Position Paper

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 06:37 PM 10/9/1999 , A.M. Rutkowski wrote:
>At 09:00 PM 10/9/99 , you wrote:
>>     Accordingly, I want to remind everyone that we did institute a 
>> two-posts-

I apologize for having missed the original notice about the limit and I 
apologize for exceeding the limiting, knowingly, with this message.

My 'excuse' for the latter is that this is a fresh topic from this 
morning's exchange and there is a rather odd challenge on the floor about 
the adequacy of the working group process.

As both one of the regular noise makers and someone with extended 
experience in the formal aspects of open, large-scale decision processes, I 
think it worth providing some reality to counter the fantasy of the challenge.

(Relevant background:  I was an IETF area director over the standards 
process, wrote about 1/2 of the original IETF process standard document, 
and wrote most of the IETF document for Working Group Chair Guidelines, as 
well as a book chapter and ACM article on the IETF process 
<http://www.brandenburg.com/ietf/ietf-stds.html>.)

>I will not and challenge it as arbitrary, capricious,
>and effectively closing the discussions.  I hope others
>will join.

Although it is unusual for a working list to impose a limit, it is far from 
unprecedented.  Further, the rule was developed by independent analysis 
(wg-d), subject to NC review and approval, and was suggested for clear 
reasons.  Further, those reasons match the bases used for other lists 
taking similar action.

That makes the rule clearly neither arbitrary nor capricious.

>Furthermore, you are minimally obligated to change your
>charters and provide notice - which you have not done.

>To: wg-c@dnso.org, javier@aui.es
>       Subject: [wg-c] IMPORTANT MESSAGE RE: WG-C
>       From: Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>
>       Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 10:58:23 -0400 (EDT)
>       cc: baf@fausett.com, Theresa.Swinehart@wcom.com
>       Sender: owner-wg-c@dnso.org
>...
>         2. Effective tomorrow, everyone is limited to posting no more than
>two messages to the list per day.  We are undertaking this step for two

It is, I suppose, comforting to see that other noise-makers missed posting 
of the notice THREE WEEKS ago, but posted it was.  As to changing the 
charter, or otherwise recording the policy, yes that would be nice, but no 
there is no formal obligation.

One would wish for an attorney to be less inventive about undocumented 
obligations.

>On the other hand, where there are continuing
>substantive discussion on issues in a working group of a
>mere 90 people on a listserver for interactive dialogue
>on those issues serves no rational purpose other than to
>stifle debate.

The piece I left off, from above, is that I happen to think the posting 
limit is an entirely reasonable constraint.  (I'm used to a limit of 3 
postings, but will suffer the tyranny of 2...)  Many of us indulge in 
posting notes that are clearly not essential.  Some of us do it to push 
people's buttons or to be obstructionistic, or whatever.

The fact of the matter is that a posting limit does, in actual fact, force 
people to participate with considerably more care.

And this is certainly one of the lists that can benefit from that discipline.

d/






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Dave Crocker                                         Tel: +1 408 246 8253
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