Re: [ga] Final draft of proposed mailing list rules

[Patrick Greenwell <patrick@stealthgeeks.net>]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Kent Crispin wrote:

> > There is a subtle bias in the nomenclature suggested here.  The official
> > archive is the unfiltered one, and it should appear at ga@dnso.org.
> 
> Nope.  The official archive is the ga@dnso.org; and the
> "ga-unfiltered@dnso.org" is just there for monitoring of possible claims
> of "censorship".  It serves no other purpose.  This is stated clearly 
> in the proposal.

Which I believe she is disagreeing with. It would seem reasonable to view 
both lists as constituting "official" archives, given that they would both
be maintained and operated by the same set of individuals for exactly the
same purpose. 

I see little value in quibbling over defining one of the lists as
*THE* official list and the other as not. 

I agree with your statement that the unfiltered list exists to monitor
claims of "censorship" however there is a little more to it than that. If
certain individuals choose to engage in or continue in disruptive
behaviour including but not limited to Denial-of-Service attacks, mail
forgery, or profane personal attack resulting in suspension of their
posting rights to ga-filtered or further sanctions, the actions of the
individual *absolutely* need to be included as part of the "official"
record and made available for public inspection to be credible. 

Doing so serves to offer recorded justification for any *initial* actions
against them, but more importantly once filtered, in the case a continuing
pattern of behaviour or repeat occurances on the unfiltered list, serves
to justify continued and/or more severe sanctions taken against them. 

If the unfiltered list were construed to be somehow "unofficial" then it
would be difficult if not impossible to credibly point to behaviour on the
unfiltered list as any sort of justification for continued/increasingly
severe sanctions any more than it would be appropriate to point to an
individuals behaviour on any other list unrelated to this one as
justification for actions taken agains them on the "official" list.

> Sorry, you misunderstand the intent.  The unfiltered list is not the 
> "true record".

Actually it is, as it is a *complete* record of all that has occured on
the list. The filtered list by definition is not, and as such does not
offer the "complete truth." It may be ugly, and people may not choose to
wade through it, however they should at all times have the right to decide
that for themselves, rather than having a definition of "true record"
imposed upon them, especially given the extremely contensious enviroment. 

> It is you who has the apples and pianos.  There are *no* significant
> rights inherent in GA "membership", just as there are *no* significant
> rights inherent in IETF "membership". 

Given that the GA is comprised of list members, the ability to subscribe
and post to the list would, contrary to your view, seem to be *the*
fundamental right of membership. This position is further strengthened by 
provisions contained in the very proposal we have before us: to create a 
filtered version of the list and to disallow posting rights to those
individuals that cannot behave themselves. It is difficult to take away
rights someone does not have(unless you are the IRS of course...)
Given the proposal does in fact contemplate *taking away* certain
abilities under certain conditions, then logic would suggest that
by default the abilities/rights were presumed to exist. 

> In fact, "membership" is not well defined for either organization.  

While I am in complete agreement with you on this subject, Ellen
graciously retreived and included minutes from a previous Names Council
meeting which while completely devoid of any other useful information on
membership quite explicitly defines the GA membership as the subscribers
to the ga@dnso.org mailing list. 

> This is an important and fundamental concept, and until you understand
> it you will be shadow boxing with ghosts.

I think rather than chastising Ellen for her supposed lack of
understanding you might do well to re-read and consider the pertinent
meeting minutes defining the GA as the subscribers of the ga@dnso.org
mailing list. 

In closing, both the filtered and unfiltered lists have value and should
both be viewed as "official" records. While I tend to side with Ellen
given that the filtered list would comprise only a subset of the postings
of the unfiltered list, arguing for one being somehow "official" whereas
the other is seemingly both non-productive and unecessary given strong
beliefs on either side of the issue and the ease in simply declaring both
lists as "official". Since one list is merely a subset of the other, 
there isn't a lot of overhead in offering "filtered" archives vs.
"unfiltered" archives. Let people decide for themselves which one
they want to look at, and move on to more important matters such as
defining a voting mechanism and what exactly being a "member" means beyond
membership to the GA mailing list.