Subject: Re: Moderator duties

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2007 10:39:08 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>I went over the text in Duties of a Moderator about what a moderator is
>allowed to do and came up with the following rewording.  Do folks feel
>that this is an improvement?  Does this address some of the concerns with
>the previous language?

>   There are no protocol restrictions on what criteria are used for
>   accepting or rejecting messages or on what modifications a moderator
>   may make to a message (both header fields and body) before injecting
>   it.  Recommended best practice, however, is to make the minimal
>   required changes.  Moderators need to be aware that modifications
>   made to articles may invalidate signatures created by the poster or
>   previous moderators.  See [USEAGE] for further best-practice
>   recommendations.

Yes, that will work.

But it does establish the point that I was tying to make, namely that the
standard does need to admit that there is more to running Usenet than bare
adherence to a standard.

Whether this is expressed by reference to some "hierarchy administrators"
who are appointed by some undefined external mechanism, or by reference to
some "moderation policy (aka 'charter') for the group", again established
by undefined external mechanism, or by reference to "some established
practice/custom/consensus of the network", or to "recommended best
practice" (with pointer to USEAGE) is just a matter of taste - some such
phraseology is needed.

"Recommended best practice" is about as weak a phrase as you could get,
but it works for this case, and possibly for some other cases that we will
encounter.

What is not so clear is the matter of control messages, where section 5.1
speaks of "authorization" with the expectation that agents will magically
know who is "authorized" but no indication where the "authority" comes
from. The related matter of "authentication" is also vague, but at least
we know that cryptographic methods exist to solve this and will hopefully
be covered in some later document (though I will be pressing later on for
something a little stronger in the present text, but that can wait for
now).

But for "authority", we still need some hint that sources for such
authority do exist (varying by hierarchy) and that they are a matter of
consensus, and may not be universally accepted. I don't see at the moment
how "recommended best practice" could be applied to cover that situation,
but we may be able to find some other phaseology for it.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

---

From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:23:40 -0500

> standard does need to admit that there is more to running Usenet than bare

I agree with this sentiment, but disagree that a reminder must appear in the 
document everywhere that it applies.  The reminders are out of scope, in
my view.  This is one of the significant improvements in clarity in RUSSPRO.

Are there any other RFCs that babysit the way that Charles suggests?  I'm
curious.  This isn't a rhetorical question.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 19:25:16 GMT

>my view.  This is one of the significant improvements in clarity in RUSSPRO.

In this case it needs to be mentioned because leaving it out (see Russ's
original version) you appear to be giving the impression that the
Moderator is free to change anything whatsoever that he doesn't like, and
we don't want to do that.

So we mention "recommended best practice" here (with reference to USEAGE)
just to make sure we don't give any such wrong impression. The same may be
required at other places. There may be further cases where such a mention
is not so urgent, and there we can discuss whether it is helpful to put it
in or not.

>curious.  This isn't a rhetorical question.

I think there are plenty of RFCs that give more than the bare facts of a
protocol by drawing attention to reasons for features, possible
implementation difficulties/strategies, gotchas, and the like.

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:59:27 -0800

Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]> writes:

> Moderator is free to change anything whatsoever that he doesn't like,
> and we don't want to do that.

Well, that's exactly what I want to do, because that's reality.  What I
don't want to give the impression that this is *recommended* or even
remotely best practice for the average moderated group.  But that doesn't
change what the moderator *can* do, which is something we also need to
make clear so that no one makes unwarranted assumptions.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 10:15:52 +0100

--On 3. januar 2007 19:25 +0000 Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

>> I agree with this sentiment, but disagree that a reminder must appear in
>> the  document everywhere that it applies.  The reminders are out of
>> scope, in my view.  This is one of the significant improvements in
>> clarity in RUSSPRO.
>

Don't speak for me.

Technical personal opinion: I don't want to claim that any change the 
moderator does is a *protocol* violation. It may be a violation of 
expectations, or of common sense, but I don't want to claim that it is a 
protocol violation.

> Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own
> thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133
> Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: [email-masked]      Snail:
> 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint:
> 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
>
>