Subject: Re: please move the spam discussion elsewhere

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 21:57:41 +0200

Bryan writes:

> Do we expect to resolve anything by continuing
> this discussion here at this time?

We don't know if we don't try.  Should we just wait for a Presidential
blue-ribbon committee, or a direct-marketing consortium report, or a study
by the Attorney General?  Would you rather that someone else decided for
you, including the potential changes that would affect your ability to use
the Internet?

I wrote a couple of suggestions in a reply to "spam and fax," but nobody
seems to have noticed.

> Again, the subject itself has great value to us all,
> but the current discussion does not, other than a
> release of written steam, if you will, which all of
> us are being subjected to, in some cases against our
> wishes.

Of all groups using the Internet, I'd expect people contributing to the IETF
to understand the absurdity of expecting the rest of the world to censor its
output rather than filter its input.  In other words, if you aren't
interested in the messages you see on the list, don't read them.  I delete
most of the traffic I see on this list most of the time, because many issues
aren't of direct interest to me, and often I have nothing to contribute.
But I don't send messages to the list telling them to stop talking about
things because it's such a tremendous burden on me to press the delete key
on my PC.

> While I realize I am capable of deleting everything
> even mentioning SPAM from the ietf list ...

Exactly.

> ... I would point out that I did so this morning already,
> when I (after not checking email for 12 hours) had 140+
> such items to delete.

Click the first item, hold down shift, click the last item, then press
Delete.  I can do this in a second or two.  In fact, I do it all the time,
on many different lists.

> This is getting nowhere fast, and I reiterate the request
> to take it offline, please.

I've never complained about anything on this list, and I've certainly
received many thousands of messages in which I had absolutely no interest.
The fact that I'm not interested in them doesn't mean that others should
stop discussing them just to allow me to rest my index finger.  I'm not the
only person on this list or on the Internet, and I don't expect or ask the
rest of the world to produce only the e-mail messages that I find acceptable
and interesting.

I find this to be a sensible and considerate policy, and the only one that
really can be practically implemented, anyway.  I submit it for your
consideration.  I won't even charge a consulting fee for the time I spent
reading your complaint and replying to it.

---

From: "Bryan Linder" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 15:42:15 -0400

Anthony,

While I agree with you on the importance of the topic, I do not believe you 
in any way invalidated the message to which you replied. Is the subject 
important? YES. Is it within the scope of the IETF? YES. Has anyone 
identified the scope of the problem, or defined its exact nature? NO. Does 
anyone really agree with anyone else on this topic? NO, at least not thus 
far in the discussion. Is it currently under discussion elsewhere? YES. Do 
we expect to resolve anything by continuing this discussion here at this 
time? If you do, then I suggest you need to re-evaluate the (mostly 
degenerated, just barely above name calling) messages to date.

Again, the subject itself has great value to us all, but the current 
discussion does not, other than a release of written steam, if you will, 
which all of us are being subjected to, in some cases against our wishes. 
While I realize I am capable of deleting everything even mentioning SPAM 
from the ietf list, I would point out that I did so this morning already, 
when I (after not checking email for 12 hours) had 140+ such items to 
delete. This is getting nowhere fast, and I reiterate the request to take it 
offline, please.

Bryan A. Linder
IT Consultant, DDS (sub Lockheed Martin at the USDN SPAWAR-ITC)

>Right now, there is probably no other greater problem with the Internet 
>than
>spam.  That sounds more than important enough to justify discussion here.
>You can delete any messages that mention spam, if you want.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>
>To: <[email-masked]>
>Cc: <[email-masked]>
>Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 19:29
>Subject: please move the spam discussion elsewhere
>
>
> > It's not that spam isn't an important problem, nor that it's entirely
> > out of scope for IETF.   But the lack of agreement on the nature of the
> > problem, along with the level of naivete in these discussions, suggest
> > that it will be a long time before these discussions can hope to bear
> > useful fruit.  And this isn't a particularly effective venue to work
> > on that problem.
> >
> > If nothing else, the NSRG antispam research group has been talking about
> > this for several months, and there's no point in repeating the same
> > arguments on the IETF list that they've been having over there.
> >
> > see https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg
> >
> >
> >
>
>

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