About EmailHistory.Org

Accountability

This site will represent the input of many contributors. For now, the one to blame is:

Policies

Participation Behavior Policies

Discussions about history often become controversial and heated. Controversy can be healthy. Heat rarely is. When it occurs with any regularity, it tends to reduce participation by otherwise-valuable representatives of the community.

Consequently this site and its discussion venues will conform to the basic open-participation policies established in the IETF, which has a long history of process and culture tha tis based on open participation. This is not an IETF site or activity, but it is borrowing from established IETF culture and policies.

The core requirement is that participants must strive to be constructive.

This obviously means maintaining a professional demeanor, but it also means staying within scope. Failure in either produces a distracted and likely hostile environment. Which winds up meaning that the discussion venue discourages participation and fails to move forward.

Anyone can have a bad day and fail in one way or the other.

Patterns of failure are another matter, and is where the Site Management must act.

Some discussion venues can be managed loosely because they're on relatively non-controversial subject matter, however the basic assumption for open discussion venues on this site is that they need close attention to participant behavior.

This notice serves to ensure that participants are aware of the rules governing participation and enforcement procedures.

Here is the formal IETF documentation for procedures to enforce acceptable participation:

RFC 2418: IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures

 > 3.3 Session Management 
 > ... 
 > To facilitate making forward 
 > progress, a Working Group Chair may wish to decide to reject  
 > or defer the input from a member, based upon the following  > criteria:  
 >  
 > Old:   
 >    The input pertains to a topic that already has been resolved  
 >    and is redundant with information previously available;  
 >  
 > Minor   
 >    The input is new and pertains to a topic that has already  
 >    been resolved, but it is felt to be of minor import to the  
 >    existing decision;  
 >  
 > Timing   
 >    The input pertains to a topic that the working group  
 >    has not yet opened for discussion; or  
 >  
 > Scope   
 >    The input is outside of the scope of the working group  
 >    charter.  

RFC 3934 as it amends RFC 2418 section 3.2

 > As in face-to-face sessions, occasionally one or more  
 > individuals may engage in behavior on a mailing list that, in  
 > the opinion of the WG chair, is disruptive to the WG process.  
 > Unless the disruptive behavior is severe enough that it must be  
 > stopped immediately, the WG chair should attempt to discourage  
 > the disruptive behavior by communicating directly with the 
 > offending individual.  If the behavior persists, the WG chair  
 > should send at least one public warning on the WG mailing list. 
 > As a last resort and typically after one or more explicit  
 > warnings and consultation with the responsible Area Director, 
  > the WG chair may suspend the mailing list posting privileges of 
 > the disruptive individual for a period of not more than 30 days...  

Therefore

Site Management will be actively managing groups' conduct with respect to any egregious behavior or any tendency towards participation that qualifies under the criteria listed under RFC 2418, Section 3.2 (as amended) or Section 3.3, and will use the enforcement procedures defined in RFC 3934 if necessary.

Intellectual Property Policies

Any submission of materials to the emailhistory.org site or a mailing list operated through emailhistory.org intended by the Contributor for publication as all or part of a document produced through the emailhistory.org activities and any statement made within the context of an emailhistory.org activity is considered an "emailhistory.org Contribution". Such statements include oral statements in emailhistory.org sessions, as well as written and electronic communications made at any time or place, which are addressed to:

Any emailhistory.org mailing list, including the discuss@emailhistory.org list itself, any working group or design team list that is part of emailhistory.org, or any other list functioning under emailhistory.org auspices

All emailhistory.org Contributions are subject to the rules of RFC 5378 and RFC 3979 (updated by RFC 4879).

Statements made outside of a formal emailhistory.org activity, mailing list or other function, that are clearly not intended to be input to an emailhistory.org activity, group or function, are not emailhistory.org Contributions in the context of this notice.

Please consult RFC 5378 and RFC 3979 for details.

A participant in any emailhistory.org activity is deemed to accept all emailhistory.org rules of process, as documented in Best Current Practices RFCs and IESG Statements.

A participant in any emailhistory.org activity acknowledges that written, audio and video records of meetings may be made and may be available to the public.