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

["Jacqueline Morris" <jam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John
This is unbelievable!

Yes, a 30 minute delay is serious when we are trying to get issues debated
in time to do a document/response or something like that. Also the fact that
some get through faster, some are delayed while some never get through makes
the discussion on the email list very difficult to follow as emails arrive
out of order.

Making the email arrive slower doesn't seem a very sensible way to foster
reasoned discussion - if we can't trust ourselves to be intelligent &
reasoned on the list, what's the point? This list is supposed to  be full of
intelligent people who want to provide input into the ICANN processes.

Going the route of less interactivity in this day and age is ridiculous IMO.
There are so many tools that allow posting for registered members to reduce
the spamming that happens on the ICANN forums- the technology that runs
those forums seems to me to be grossly out of date.

And if ICANN insists that the ALAC list is full of "ungoverned
conversations" that go off into "wild directions"  - there's a very simple
solution - let them moderate it with a 10 min delay at most, or lets create
our own list and discussions on www.icannalac.org and leave ICANN's
prehistoric list and website management well alone.

Jacqueline

On 10/17/06, John L <johnl@xxxxxxxx> 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?


--
Jacqueline Morris
www.carnivalondenet.com
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