Subject: Petition to the IESG for a PR-action against Jefsey Morfin posted

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:09:59 +0200

I have now finished my work on a petition explaining to the IESG why I 
think Jefsey Morfin should be banned from posting on the IETF list under 
RFC 3683.

It's time to figure out whether there are more people who agree with me and 
the other signatories on this.

Please read the petition, and if you agree, sign it.

Petition: <http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/jefsey-pr-action.php>

The online version includes references to sample postings by Jefsey.
Main body of text reproduced below.

This message will be posted to the IETF list, the ietf-languages list and 
the LTRU mailing list. Please keep discussion on the IETF list.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
                Jefsey Morfin PR-Action Petition

   Last modified: September 28, 2005

   This message is a request to the IESG to consider
   approving a PR-action, as per RFC 3683, barring the
   person known as Jean-Francois Charles Morfin
   ("Jefsey"), an individual known to be posting from the
   addresses [email-masked], [email-masked],
   [email-masked], [email-masked],
   [email-masked] and [email-masked], from the
   IETF mailing list, and giving blanket permission to any
   manager of any IETF mailing list to bar him from
   posting there, as per the RFC.

Disruptive behaviour

   Based on the public record of Jefsey's postings, we
   believe that Jefsey Morfin is engaging in disruptive
   behaviour that has caused considerable damage to the
   ability of the IETF to proceed speedily and with
   consensus in the working groups in which he has
   participated.

   In particular, his postings exhibit:
     * Use of inflammatory language towards others [1]
     * Misquoting and misrepresenting of other people's
       arguments [2]
     * Refusal to stop pursuing an argument in the face of
       consensus against him [3]
     * Misrepresentation of non-IETF organizations [4]
     * Personal attacks and use of threatening language
       against people who disagree with him, using
       attributes such as language, nationality or
       employer [5]
     * Postings that seem to serve no purpose apart from
       inciting negative reaction [6]
     * Very limited ability to contribute anything with
       actual technical content to the discussion

   Effects of this behaviour is to make other people
   either angry enough to post further inflammatory emails
   to the lists (disrupting constructive discussion) or to
   cause participants with valuable insight to drop out of
   the conversation (reducing the input to the IETF
   process), or to refuse to consider contributing work on
   documents in WGs where Jefsey is active (making it
   harder to get work done).

Previous chastisement history

   A number of people have tried explaining to Jefsey why
   his behaviour is inappropriate. No change in behaviour
   has occured. [A]

   To the petitioners' knowledge, his posting rights to
   IETF mailing lists have been suspended three times -
   once to the LTRU WG's mailing list [B], and twice to
   the ietf-languages mailing list [C][D].

   These suspensions have produced no change in behaviour.

Conclusion

   We, the undersigned, believe that the material
   presented above provides a clear case that Jefsey
   Morfin is being "abusive of the consensus-driven
   process", as required by RFC 3683, and therefore ask
   that the IESG undertake a PR-action against Jefsey
   Morfin.

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "william(at)elan.net" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 23:32:33 -0700 (PDT)

Would it be too much to ask for new rules so that in the future these 
petitions be discussed on some other mail list setup for this purpose
(and for other general issues of ietf email lists administration) and 
that [email-masked] be only used to indicate new petition or results of
one and remind those interested where to post comments about it.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:36:39 +0200

Harald,
Just out of curiosity : is there a symmetrical way to oppose a petition 
like this one ? Or can arguments only be one-sided ?
I think such a petition page should contain several choices : approve, 
disapprove, don't care,...
The way it is done on the page is heavily slanted towards approval of 
the ban, and offers no way to oppose it. This is understandable because 
it is partial, but partiality should not have a say when gathering 
opinions that may ultimately result in collective action.
What we need is a tool to weight whether there is a significant majority 
of people approving the ban, not one that tells us some people want it 
(which will always be verified).
Regards,
Julien..

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> think Jefsey Morfin should be banned from posting on the IETF list 
> under RFC 3683.

-- 
Julien Maisonneuve                      2.333
Alcanet 2101 1145                       Alcatel HQ - Standardisation
Tel +33 1 4076 1145                     54 rue la Boëtie, F-75008 Paris
Fax +33 1 4076 5912                     [email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:24:42 +0200

William,

It's hard to make that a rule. Unfortunately, this is the catch-all
list for the IETF. Note, Harald is not inviting discussion -
only a URL to click on.

    Brian

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:58:15 +0200

> disapprove, don't care,...

Sure there is - create your own page, write your petition text, and ask 
people to sign up there. I'll even share the PHP code with you if you want 
it!

I have taken on the role of arguing *for* banning Jefsey from the IETF. I'm 
not neutral in any way, shape or form. It's the IESG's business to say 
whether or not the requirements of the RFC are fulfiled.

> The way it is done on the page is heavily slanted towards approval of the
> ban, and offers no way to oppose it. This is understandable because it is
> partial, but partiality should not have a say when gathering opinions
> that may ultimately result in collective action.

The IESG decides based on evidence presented to it. One of the pieces of 
evidence is that the people (10 so far) who have signed the petition 
believe that Jefsey Morfin is being "abusive of the consensus-driven 
process" (that's a quote from RFC 3683). Others may want to present other 
relevant evidence.

I'm acting as advocate in this case. I'm not the jury.

                       Harald

PS: I recommend reading both RFC 3683 and a selection of Jefsey's messages 
before making up your mind about the case....

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:46:30 +0200

(this should not go on ietf@ietf, but for lack of a better list... 
please disregard if it bothers you)
Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> Sure there is - create your own page, write your petition text, and 
> ask people to sign up there. I'll even share the PHP code with you if 
> you want it!

This is not what I call a "symmetrical" means to express disapproval : 
for the average reader, it take a *lot* more work to defend than to attack.
So I take your answer is there is no symmetrical way and it is a lot 
harder to express disapproval than approval. This is what I call a 
slanted process, and I would deem it inappropriate in any oranization 
that prides itself on fair and balanced processes.
Note that the whole issue of list ban is treading on first amendment 
grounds in a way that could end up in court.

> I have taken on the role of arguing *for* banning Jefsey from the 
> IETF. I'm not neutral in any way, shape or form. It's the IESG's 
> business to say whether or not the requirements of the RFC are fulfiled.

This is what I call "partial". Being partial is perfectly OK. It's just 
that I don't think the process should rely on partiality. I even think 
it should exclude partiality as much as possible. The way to do that 
here is to allow people to express their opinion in an unslanted way.
Your page would be a perfect tool if it wasn't slanted

> The IESG decides based on evidence presented to it. One of the pieces 
> of evidence is that the people (10 so far) who have signed the 
> petition believe that Jefsey Morfin is being "abusive of the 
> consensus-driven process" (that's a quote from RFC 3683). Others may 
> want to present other relevant evidence.

Presenting slanted evidence is hardly a positive action. You will always 
find a few people to ban a controversial poster. It will always be 
harder to find people on the defending side, because the individual 
interest in defending a (controversial) person is always low and will 
generally not justify defensive actions.
That process will inevitably result in banning people even though a 
(possibly silent) majority doesn't approve it. This is not what I would 
call consensus-based decision.

> I'm acting as advocate in this case. I'm not the jury.

Or rather prosecutor ?

> PS: I recommend reading both RFC 3683 and a selection of Jefsey's 
> messages before making up your mind about the case....

I haven't, and I'm not even sure I care.
I'm worried about the process, and about the number of times it seems to 
be invoked.
Banning should be exceptional. Now we are presented with two dubious 
(read non obvious, possibly requiring very careful inspection to arrive 
to a conclusion) cases in the space of a few days, and it appears that 
the process itself is hardly symmetrical and lacks clear consensus 
safeguards.
In a balanced world, this would spell doom for RFC3683.

Regards,
Julien.

-- 
Julien Maisonneuve
(not speaking for my employer or anyone else)

---

From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:24:04 -0400 (EDT)

</legal lurk>

No first amendment issues are implicated here.  The first amendment only 
protects US persons (citizens & residents) against actions by the US 
government.  Both sides of that equation are absent here.

This is private action against a private party.  It may implicate the 
moral principles of freedom of expression but these are not ordinarily 
actionable either in the US or elsewhere.  YMMV of course.

Please note that this comment expresses no opinion on the merits of the 
ban.

<legal lurk>

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 [email-masked] wrote:

[much edited]

> Note that the whole issue of list ban is treading on first amendment grounds 
> in a way that could end up in court.

-- 
http://www.icannwatch.org   Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net
A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   [email-masked]
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
                        -->It's @#$% hot here.<--

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:35:54 -0400

Hi Julien,

I think that there is some misunderstanding regarding what is 
happening.  Harald Alvestrand is not in charge of an IETF PR-action 
process, and he has no official role in this process.

Harald is attempting to assemble information that he will use to 
propose a PR-action (a "Posting Rights" action), as described in RFC 
3683.  Once he has assembled this information, he will presumably use 
the information to persuade a member of the IESG (an AD) to sponsor 
this action.  That AD would then be in charge of running a fair and 
open process to decide whether or not Jefsey Morphin's posting rights 
should be revoked.

If Harald finds an AD who will sponsor this action, then the process 
described in RFC 3683 would be followed.  That process includes an 
IETF Last Call period, during which any member of the community may 
comment on the action.  After that, the IESG would make a decision on 
the action using the usual consensus-based process.  Like all IESG 
decisions, that decision is also subject to appeal.  This is all 
described quite clearly in RFC 3683.

Harald is not required to be impartial in this effort, any more than 
a document author is required to be impartial in garnering support 
for his own technical work.  It is the AD's job to make sure that the 
process of evaluating the PR-action is run fairly.

If an AD does decide to sponsor this PR-action, there will be an 
explicit opportunity for the community to comment on this action (the 
IETF LC) before a decision is made regarding it.

Margaret

At 5:46 PM +0200 9/30/05, [email-masked] wrote:
>This is not what I call a "symmetrical" means to express disapproval 
>: for the average reader, it take a *lot* more work to defend than 
>to attack.

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:31:06 +0200

[email-masked] wrote:

> (this should not go on ietf@ietf, but for lack of a better
> list... please disregard if it bothers you)

[...]

> Banning should be exceptional.

So far 3683 was never used (please correct me if I'm wrong).

> Now we are presented with two dubious (read non obvious,
> possibly requiring very careful inspection to arrive
> to a conclusion) cases in the space of a few days

Very different at the moment:  Only an AD can start (or
prepare to start) a "PR action".  That might be what we've
seen in the first case.

This second case is still at the "convince an AD to support
to start a PR action" stage.  It's a private petition of
Harald (he's affected as listmom of the tag review list, so
unlike most others he's not free to use his killfile there).

> it appears that the process itself is hardly symmetrical
> and lacks clear consensus safeguards.

That would come later in the "last call".  At the moment the
second case is a private list of signatures, same idea as e.g.
<http://old.openspf.org/cgi-bin/openspf_pledge.cgi> - but of
course the signatures of several (former) IETF Chairs, ADs,
WG co-Chairs, Unicode Chair, TAO author, etc. might impress
the poor active AD(s) who finally get(s) this list...

> In a balanced world, this would spell doom for RFC3683.

...so far it's like an unpublished I-D.  If you don't agree
with it you could ignore it until the potential "last call".

                         Bye, Frank

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:00:51 -0400

>open process to decide whether or not Jefsey Morphin's posting rights 

I confess that I'm uneasy about Harald's action.  It has too much the 
air of an unpopularity contest -- every one who doesn't like Jefsey's
should sign on to kick him off the mailing list.  

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:00:49 +0200

If the IESG has the time to compile blacklists and go on witch hunts,
perhaps it doesn't have enough work to justify its existence.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:46:58 +0200

> should sign on to kick him off the mailing list.

It doesn't make me feel good either. But the alternatives I saw were:

- Don't do anything, and let Jefsey continue doing damage
- Make a solo proposal (or one with its supporters gathered privately) to 
the IESG for a PR-action
- Be public, and see who else agreed with my opinion

I did not find the first alternative attractive.
The second sounded like it could easily be seen as "the in-crowd is 
conspiring to silence dissent" by conspiracy theorists.
So by Hobson's choice, I ended up with the third one.

I'm happy to see that there are names on my petition that I don't recognize 
at all - it gives me some confidence that my exasperation with Jefsey's 
behaviour was not just something peculiar to my viewpoint or that of my 
friends.

But once next week's gone by, I'm happy to pass the token to the IESG, and 
worry no more about it.

                          Harald

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:52:48 +0200

> should sign on to kick him off the mailing list.

Oh.

Right.

Good point!

As I understand the rules of behavior, they impose some objective criteria. 
Whether one has violated those criteria well might be a judgment call, but 
assessing "facts" by polling public opinion is problematic for exactly the 
reason Steve raises:  it is usually confounded by affective factors, such as 
(dis)liking.

Harald is asserting some facts about a particular person's posting behavior.

It should not require subtle thinking or otherwise involve much precision to 
evaluate Harald's petition.

If the fact of a person's violating the rules is legitimately debatable -- in 
other words, if it might reasonably be considered a close call -- then they 
probably have not violated the rules (or, at least, not violated them enough.)

The IETF sargeant at arms should just do an evaluation of the person's 
history, relative to the petition, and publish their assessment.

d/

-- 

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  +1.408.246.8253
  dcrocker  a t ...
  WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:01:57 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 11:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Petition to the IESG for a PR-action against Jefsey Morfinposted
>
...

At the WG level, disruptive members cause an enormous increase in the
effort required to get anything done.  Our desire to ensure that minority
viewpoints are heard puts us in a difficult bind when only ones expressing
those viewpoints are individuals who also choose to behave badly.

Invoking RFC 3934 at the WG level is not something that any WG chair
would undertake lightly.  I've gotten a lot of criticism for not using it more.
I'm sure the IESG is fully aware of the gravity of invoking RFC 3683.
The fact that it hasn't been used before speaks for itself.  However,
the reason the procedures exist at all is out of the recognition that a
very few people are so abusive of our processes and culture that we
need to be able to cut them off so that we can get real work done.
If their technical arguments have real merit, they will reach us by other
avenues.

It would be so much simpler if everyone could be counted on to
recognize (easy) and ignore (hard) the bad actors.

Randy

---

From: "Thomas Gal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:06:22 -0700

> So I take your answer is there is no symmetrical way and it 
> is a lot harder to express disapproval than approval. This is 
> what I call a slanted process, and I would deem it 
> inappropriate in any oranization that prides itself on fair 
> and balanced processes.

Acutally I think it's probably Harald being able to just concern himself
with spearheading his own issues for once after many years of service to the
IETF which likely prevented him from taking sides on many issues. I
certainly think that if someone feels passionately about preserving
someone's rights to post to the list because they're input is that valuable
they will take that course. This is not an IESG or administrative action in
any way. It's the motion of one person to the organization. NOBODY IS IN ANY
WAY LIMITING YOU FROM TAKING ANY ACTION! Not to mention the fact that there
is quite a few levels of appeals built into this process just like any
other.

> Note that the whole issue of list ban is treading on first 
> amendment grounds in a way that could end up in court.
> 

Are you saying spammers have write to send us all emails we don't feel are
valid every day? I distinctly recall complaining about an organization that
was spamming many WG lists with conference postsings, and I didn't notice
any vehment opposition on the grounds of free speech popping up.

Quote from RFC which I guess you didn't read:

"   Q: Is this censorship?

   A: Only if you believe in anarchy.

      What is important is that the rules surrounding PR-actions exhibit
      the same properties used by the rest of the consensus-based
      process.
"

> This is what I call "partial". Being partial is perfectly OK. 
> It's just that I don't think the process should rely on 
> partiality. I even think it should exclude partiality as much 
> as possible. The way to do that here is to allow people to 
> express their opinion in an unslanted way.

His page is for him. It's not for the IETF. The reason we have rough
consensus is specifically because nobody expects everyone to be impartial
and perfect.

> Presenting slanted evidence is hardly a positive action. You 
> will always find a few people to ban a controversial poster. 
> It will always be harder to find people on the defending 
> side, because the individual interest in defending a 
> (controversial) person is always low and will generally not 
> justify defensive actions.
> That process will inevitably result in banning people even 
> though a (possibly silent) majority doesn't approve it. This 
> is not what I would call consensus-based decision.
> 

If nobody cares enough to mount the effort....that seems like some good
evidence to me. It might be worth noting that this process just like any
other requires rough consensus, so I'm not really sure what you're talking
about. What, out of curiostiy, is better then evidence to present? Should we
take a poll on who likes whom? Do we have any statistics on how many people
have been banned from the list? You say inevitable but haven't really backed
it up with any facts.

> I'm worried about the process, and about the number of times 
> it seems to be invoked.
> Banning should be exceptional. Now we are presented with two 
> dubious (read non obvious, possibly requiring very careful 
> inspection to arrive to a conclusion) cases in the space of a 
> few days, and it appears that the process itself is hardly 
> symmetrical and lacks clear consensus safeguards.

I'm not glad sombody who didn't even choose to read the relavant documents
is criticizing the process. I am glad to see this much discussion, which
easily alays my fears of a bad choice being made. I'm sorry if this mail in
particular seems vehment, but I think that's fairly disrespectful to all of
us for you to criticize a process, and well, frankly blindly doing so seems
to me a frank effort to do just what RFC 3683 seeks to prevent, bogging down
the IETF with inpertinent statements for no reason.

> Julien.

That's nice that you have the luxury to speak for yourself only, which you
seem to imply (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't apply to others. I certainly
read a lot of contradictions, and unfounded claims, along with outright
disrespect for IETF members and it's documents. Pardon me if I seem a little
bothered.

-Tom

---

From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:07:04 -0700

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> - Make a solo proposal (or one with its supporters gathered privately) 
> to the IESG for a PR-action

what about:

- killfile the person and encourage others to do the same?

Is Usenet really that distant of a memory? And the dynamics
would probably work the right way too: on Usenet, there can
be an amusement factor associated with the abuse bottom's
torment which makes for a sustained feedback loop. But this
is a professional organization, not an electronic cocktail
party so I'd expect convergence more often than the feedback
loop.

This leaves the chairs who would have to deal with the person,
but one would assume that it would eventually get lonely doing
write-only posts and eventually go away. Only if that didn't
work should the posting death penalty be contemplated, IMO.

		Mike, with no opinion on the specific case

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:21:14 -0400

> - killfile the person and encourage others to do the same?

Unfortunately that no longer works all that well on Usenet,
either.  The participant pool grows to the point where there's
always somebody new, or somebody who thinks that the problem
person has a point and who wants to discuss it, or someone
who thinks the problem person doesn't have a point but has
some ill-defined right to be heard, and so on.  Additionally,
there has to be some process for identifying problem persons.
That can work well in some small, close-knit online
communities where there's a very large set of shared values,
but it doesn't work all that well here.

Also, note that the IETF intends to make decisions by a
modified consensus process and that process is actually
pretty fragile.  It's reasonable to provide mechanisms to
protect the process, and I think it's a lot healthier if
those mechanisms are transparent and as objective as might
be possible under the circumstances.

Mind you, I just freakin' hate this.  But I don't think the
process itself as described in 3683 is at all unreasonable.

Melinda

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 21:30:05 +0200

> - killfile the person and encourage others to do the same?

Tried that. He's still yelling, and people regularly yell back at him.
See petition text, "effects".

---

From: "Marshall Eubanks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:37:22 -0400

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:00:51 -0400
> 		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Hello;

I think it should make you uneasy. Just wait until someone on the other end of this puts up a
similar petition and gets a few thousands signatories after posting an inflammatory diary to the
right blog or mailing list.

FWIW, I have read through the various emails on this (including the emails to the
IETF list from M Morphin), and I do not support Harald's action.

OTOH, I have changed my mind on the other case based on Mr. Anderson's recent emails, and 
do support David Kessens's recent action.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:48:48 +0200

Melinda Shore writes:

> some ill-defined right to be heard, and so on.

You say it as though these were bad things.

> but it doesn't work all that well here.

That is, small communities where everyone has the same opinion and no
deviations are tolerated.

> process itself as described in 3683 is at all unreasonable.

You'll hate it even more when they come looking for you instead.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:52:32 +0200

Randy Presuhn writes:

> effort required to get anything done.

How hard can it be to delete messages?

> Our desire to ensure that minority viewpoints are heard puts us in a
> difficult bind when only ones expressing those viewpoints are
> individuals who also choose to behave badly.

You can just ignore people who behave badly.  Why must they be
silenced for everyone just because you don't want to hear them?

> would undertake lightly.

I don't even understand why this is an RFC.  What does it have to do
with the technical functioning of the Internet?  What next?  An RFC
establishing an official religion?

> I'm sure the IESG is fully aware of the gravity of invoking RFC 3683.

I doubt that.  If it were that aware, no such RFC would exist in the
first place.

> However, the reason the procedures exist at all is out of the
> recognition that a very few people are so abusive of our processes
> and culture that we need to be able to cut them off so that we can
> get real work done.

Translation: Everyone reaches a point where he prefers to censor
others rather than tolerate them.

> If their technical arguments have real merit, they will reach us by other

If other avenues work, you don't need mailing lists, do you?

> recognize (easy) and ignore (hard) the bad actors.

If people don't want to ignore them, why is it your duty to do their
thinking for them?

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:02:44 -0700

Hi -

> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 2:52 PM

...

> perhaps it doesn't have enough work to justify its existence.

My answer to Anthony's questions is that I've experienced
one of these onslaughts while serving as a WG co-chair.  In that position,
one does NOT have the luxury of killfiles, and can NOT simply ignore
their technical arguments, particularly when the postings are filled with
threats of appeals and other invocations of time-and-resource consuming
process mechanisms.  When the bad behaviour triggers bad behaviour
in other WG members and distracts the WG from its deliverables, we
all suffer, but *especially* the ADs and WG chairs.  We have far too much
to do as it is.  Dealing with trivial-issue DoS attacks, psuedo-technical postings
that must be scanned in hope of somehow finding a plausible concern,
and constant threats of appeal *dramatically* increases the workload.

Randy