Re: Dan Bernstein's issues about namedroppers list operation

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Jim,

>     Executive summary: I see no evidence that Randy is censoring postings
>     from Dan. It is the case that some of his messages do not appear to
>     have made it out on namedroppers, but it is unclear why this is.
>     Furthermore, given that most of these missing messages were cc'ed to
>     other lists (i.e., the ietf and iesg lists), there is no evidence of
>     censorship.

> I do not agree that your concluding statement follows from the prior
> two.  Such a conclusion suggests it would be acceptable for a list owner
> to forward to the IETF list all messages that they do not want to
> distribute to their WG mailing list to obviate all claims of censorship.
> Worse, originators could cc the IETF list on all messages "just in
> case."

> It should be the case that the merits of a claim of censorship are
> judged in the context of the mailing list at issue, not in the joining
> of the contexts of the "ietf", "iesg", or other mailing lists with the
> mailing list at issue.

Censorship is a loaded term but has a clear component. In particular,
it includes intentional removal of content in order to have its
publication be surpressed. Emphasis on intentional. I simply do not
see evidence of this based on what I understand of the situation.

My point about the cc'ing the other lists is that if censorship is the
intent, it's a pretty ineffective attempt if those same messages are
going to a rather public list (e.g., ietf). Thus, I just can't see
this as compelling evidence of intent.

It would certainly not be acceptable to supress mail on one list just
because it appeared on another list. I did not intent my wording to
suggest that.

>     Namedroppers is a posters-only mailing list that is run in conformance
>     with the policies outlined in
>     http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/IESG/STATEMENTS/mail-submit-policy.txt.

> According to your description of how the mailing list operates it most
> certainly is not in conformance with the policy.

>     Specifically, all mail sent to namedroppers is:

>     1) first run through spamassassin. Mail that is rejected here is not
>        archived, as the number of such messages is large. All mail sent to
>        mailing lists on the server hosting namedroppers is run though
>        spamassassin, so this is not a namedroppers-specific procedure.

> The policy does not permit messages to be run through spamassassin
> first.  Messages from subscribers and other known addresses are approved
> first.  That is clearly stated in the first principle.  It is
> non-subscriber messages that are subject to review.

> The fact that spamassassin is applied at the point of SMTP submission to
> the server may be the basis for an exception from the point of view of
> the IESG but it is wrong to represent it as otherwise.

Point taken. I don't think this exact point was discussed at the time
the policy was put together. But to be fair, the use of spamassassin
here is not the issue. It's the silent discarding of messages that are
flagged as being spam. They could also be looked at by a human.

>     It does appear that *some* of the message that Dan has sent to
>     namedroppers have not appeared on the namedroppers mailing list. But
>     it is unclear why that happened. At the time of these postings, some
>     of his other messages have gone through.

> This fact alone suggests a problem.

No denying that there was a problem. But I also believe that the
problem has effectively been fixed now that djb's posting address is
in the list of approved posters. The reason this has come up at all is
that he had (for quite some time) been posting from a non-subscribed
address.

> While it may not be censorship (and
> I have no evidence to suggest it is) you can not conclusively say there
> is no censorship. Perhaps the spamassassin is overzealous in its
> rankings.  This is trivial to prove or disprove by simply manually
> running one of Dan's messages through the spamassassin on the server in
> question.  If it rejects the message we will know why and we will know
> the exception to the first principle is suspect.  If it does not then
> again there is a problem somewhere.

> Based on your description of the overall operation if the spamassassin
> does not reject the message the only thing left to be at fault is the
> "reviewers."  Are they simply making mistakes in their haste or is it
> censorship?  Or is there another point in the process that could
> objectively the problem?

My assumption is that the approvals of the messages in question were
fat-fingered.  Given that I have seen nothing that suggests a desire
or intent to censor anyone on the list, I chose not to read an such
intent in the cases at issue here. But of course, there is no way to
prove one way or the other.

Thomas