[alac] Re: Why there are chronic delays on mail to the ICANN ALAC list

[Wendy Seltzer <wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, I've also told Kent I'm frustrated by this.  It's ridiculous to 
try to hold a conversation when replies are all out of sync because 
of different greylist delays, and our teleconference facilities 
aren't much better.

There are also multiple greylists operating on the same mail, so 
delay may be several hours.

Amazing example of "code is law" :)
--Wendy

At 12:03 PM 10/17/2006 -0400, John L wrote:
> Kent introduced them deliberately, because he thinks they're good for us.
>
> No, I am not making this up.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet 
> for Dummies",
> Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor
> "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:35:09 -0700
> From: kent <kent@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: John L <johnl@xxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [alac-admin] Re: E-mail spam alert...
>
> On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 12:54:09AM -0400, John L wrote:
> > > greylist-milter.  The milter does whitelist addresses, but we have 4
> > > round-robin mail gateways, and there isn't a global whitelist database.
> > > Frequent correspondents don't get delayed much, since they usually hit all
> > > 4
> > > gateways within the whitelist decay -- I make it pretty long to help that.
> >
> > The delays are a chronic problem on the ALAC lists.
>
> Our perspectives may differ on this :-) and I would be interested to hear
> your thoughts.
>
> One of ICANN's fundamental goals is to collect reasoned opinions.  One of the
> longest standing complaints about ICANN's email lists has been that they
> fostered mindless back and forth rather than thoughtful comments.  ICANN has
> tried a number different approaches.  We used straight email lists for a
> while -- they degenerated into flamefests.  We used a web-based 
> comment forum for
> a while -- that was just as bad.  We noticed that any highly 
> interactive mechanism
> tends to foster back and forth ungoverned conversations with tendencies to
> go off in wild directions.  Making things *less* interactive, as in the
> current comment forum mechanism, has been far more successful in collecting
> meaningful input.
>
> The alac seems to be a relatively polite bunch, but one could argue that's
> just a function of the current membership dynamics.
>
> So, when you say that the delays are a chronic problem, I would be
> interested to know precisely what you see that problem to be.  I certainly
> agree that the delays may be chronic.  But why is that a problem?  Are there
> really occasions where a half hour delay is a serious issue?

--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org