Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 13:50:08 -0400
From: Theodore Ts'o 
To: Dean Anderson 
Cc: Brian E Carpenter ,
     JORDI PALET MARTINEZ 
Subject: Re: I'm not going to listen to this any more.

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 12:27:38PM -0400, Dean Anderson wrote:
> I haven't made any assertions about "alleged" liars. I have brought
> attention to statements of _court-proven_ liars.  That is, those people
> who have made false statements, have been sued for defamation, and have
> lost those lawsuits. Having lost a defamation lawsuit establishes the
> _fact_ of their lying.

Dean, when I asked you about this in a private e-mail, you pointed me
at a _single_ person who lost a lawsuit regarding the listing of ISP's
in ORB's style anti-spam systems.  So far, what you have shown to me
is a single person (not plural) who has last such a lawsuit.  However,
just because someone has lost a particular lawsuit does not mean that
they habitually utter falsehoods.

Futhermore, calling someone a lair instead of attacking a specific
statement for truth or falsehood constitutes an ad-hominem argument.
Please see:

        http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

Worse yet, you are not even attacking the idea at this point via the
ad hominem fallacy, but you are rather attacking various people on
this list for _not_ using the ad hominem falacy, and for "associating
with lairs" (and again, one proven act of a falsehood uttered
maliciously does not make someone who "lies repeatedly" --- and if you
believe that anyone who associates with someone who has lied even
once, then attacking them on that grounds that they are somehow
violating societal norms is both (a) laughable, (b) nevertheless,
still a attack.)

The bottom line is that none of this is useful nor part of the IETF
mailing list charter.  Please stop this beating this dead horse on the
IETF list.  This is your first warning.

                                        - Ted
                                        IETF list "sargeant-at-arms"