On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Jonathan Zittrain wrote:
> Fair enough. I honestly don't see much difference, in practice, between
> the ORSC and IFWP lists as they stand. To apply the ORSC rules to IFWP
> would make them even more similar. I want to know more about how ORSC
> means to run its streetcorner, and to know whether there's an IFWP--maybe
> it's defined as everyone willing to say he or she is a member--that could
> have its own idea about its respective streetcorner. If people just post
> interchangeably, why have two lists and fragment the discussions?
Well, people don't post interchangeably.
I repeat, the ORSC is one small faction. The IFWP achieved the closest
thing to universal participation in this debate, and the closest thing
to consensus, that I am aware of. Also, the IFWP has a very broad remit,
and the Open Root Server Confederation has a very narrow one.
> >The IFWP list has never had an agreed charter, but the list has certainly
> >always been open (except of course during the peculiar period after 11
> >December 1998 when some people were unsubscribed). Everyone has been free
> >to come and talk and so a wide spectrum of viewpoints has always
> >been represented here.
>
> That's been my impression too--although I'm a little hesitant to say it.
> After all, you were the one who took me to task for saying I'd try not to
> cross-post by confining my own comments mostly to IFWP, because of that
> "peculiar" period!
I took you to task because in December the IFWP list briefly became a
closed list, in that a significant number of the more outspoken
participants were excluded from the list. This appears to have been
corrected.
> >Should the ORSC civil discourse rules be adopted? These require the
> >appointment of three all-powerful moderators. Given the wide disparity
> >of views represented on this list, and given the rabid dislike that
> >some individuals have for each other, it's difficult to see how this
> >list could agree upon who the moderators should be. Equally, I don't
> >know who could be trusted to act in this role without using it to
> >promote their own positions.
>
> Agreed. I do, though, also see a problem when half the messages on the
> list are from one particular person, and anything goes in the discourse.
Well, like a lot of people I use filters which neatly shunt messages
from a couple of people into separate mailboxes, so I only read them
when I feel like it ...
> Selective filtering by each listreader is meant to address that, but it
> creates fuzz when we're each essentially reading different subsets of the
> list depending on whom we filter.
I don't believe that everyone reads every posting to these lists, so
this occurs whether you filter or not. In the old days, before I began
filtering, I used to routinely select all of the postings from our most
prolific writer and either save or delete them en masse. I don't think
that I lost anything by doing so.
More generally, we all filter all of the time. I get hundreds of pieces
of email each day; many of these contain pointers to other documents,
which in turn contain pointers to other documents, and so forth. If we
didn't filter, we would go mad.�
> Is there any way, architecturally, to do
> better for discussion of the issues than what we have now?
The only thing that comes to mind is the approach taken on the IETF list,
where there are two lists, one completely open and the other pre-filtered.
If you subscribe to the latter list instead of [EMAIL PROTECTED], you get
everything posted to the first list LESS spam and the postings of a few
selected individuals (including, I think, Bob, Jeff, and Jim Fleming).
> >> >b) should we stick one of Ellens grey ribbons on the
> >> >mailing list website ?
> >
> >What mailing list website?
>
> There was a url listed in Richard's first post. I think the list is
> mirrored there for those who want to read it with a web browser. Here it
> is--<http://lists.ifwp.org>. ...JZ
To those of us who spent a lot of our time, energy, and money organising the
IFWP, the lack of a pointer back to www.ifwp.org, the use of a different
logo, and the description of the IFWP process are all somewhat disturbing.
> Jon Zittrain
> Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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