Subject: [dmarc-ietf] Comportment on this list

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 23:26:40 -0700

Colleagues,

The IETF has some written guidelines about management of and conduct on
mailing lists.  In particular, the IETF's anti-harassment policy [1] and a
number of RFCs [2] [3] [4] [5] and IESG statements [6] [7] form the body of
the IETF's guidelines and procedures regarding mailing list management.
Although this mailing list is not presently associated with a working
group, its management and policies are covered by several of these.

The recurring theme among them is that the lists are to be used for
technical or procedural discussion to advance a particular goal, and
professionalism is expected of participants.  When the debate veers off
topic or into anything from the plainly impolite to the patently personal,
it serves only to interfere with any progress that's being made.

Multiple posts from the last 24 hours certainly have the feel of being
outside of what's acceptable.  In at least one case, it has resulted in a
formal complaint from another participant, which has led me here as one of
the two list administrators of record.

I understand that it might be fun or even cathartic to beat up on people
who disagree with your position, or on those who are members of the
DMARC.org "cabal", or any of the other the people you may wish to blame for
the mess in which we find ourselves, but I believe we are all better served
by cooperating to find a path forward from where we are now rather than
engaging in those activities.  Learning from the past is fine; pointing
fingers about the past is not.

Thus, I am reminding all of you of your obligation to keep this discussion
professional, on topic, respectful, and friendly.  You do neither yourself
nor the community any favors by giving in to the temptation to be rude or
one-up the other person when you get frustrated.  It will not be tolerated
here going forward.

-MSK, list admin

[1] http://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/ietf-anti-harassment-policy.html
[2] RFC 2418
[3] RFC 3683
[4] RFC 3934
[5] RFC 4633
[6] http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/statement-disruptive-posting.txt
[7] http://www.ietf.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/moderated-lists.txt