--On Monday, June 8, 2020 10:22 -0400 Lou Berger <lberger@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > On 6/5/2020 11:01 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote: >>> (1) The IETF has had a practice (I'd claim a principle) that >>> people are allowed to observe sessions in real time, without >>> identifying themselves or paying a fee, since "observe" meant >>> audio-only and multicast. >> In this case, we may be running up against realities of >> history and what was feasible. I was certainly not around at >> the time of the earliest IETFs (my first was 64), but are you >> really asserting that the IETF_always_ allowed anyone to go >> into any meeting without "joining" in some sense? > > FWIW I think the principle went beyond just observation. I > remember Phil Gross saying, when he was IETF Chair, that the > IETF didn't check badges at meeting room doors since it was > more important to have good technical contribution than to > block those who couldn't pay. Of course, this didn't mean > allowing anonymous contributions or that those that payed > weren't subsidizing those who didn't. We of course blew that principle off when we had a few meetings in which where badge checks at meeting room doors and we tried experiments about badge readers at microphones. And, IIR, we instituted the former with a lot less discussion and fuss than the current changes have caused. I don't know, but I suspect, that some of the difference is the sudden announcement of a fee with very little lead time and no opportunity to have the discussion we are having now. Yes, as Andrew points out, the sudden onset of the COVID-19 situation constrains the options for discussion. However, the possibility that we would need to have more than one all-remote meeting was known, and discussed on this list, even before the decision to convert IETF 107 to all-remote was made. And, while I might have misread things, I thought that, when that decision was made, the message from the community about planning and discussion was fairly clear. I may be repeating myself, but, given the compressed schedule around the IETF 107 decision, the IESG, IRTF Chair, and the IETF LLC Board coming together and making that decision seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Doing it that way again, and maybe again and again, seems less so.[1] Perhaps what concerns me most about the current situation is that the pressure of time was, in March, a good reason for making decisions in an ad hoc way and by an ad hoc collection of people/bodies. However, given that it was clear to the community that we _might_ have to hold additional all-remote meetings this year (or even sometime), I'm concerned that we are still proceeding in an ad hoc mode, with claims that the COVID-19 emergency leaves no time for community input, three months on. Could we had today's discussions in late March or early April? Yes, I think so and, IIR, people were suggesting it. Is the IESG plus the LLC Board plus the IRTF Chair the right group to be making these decisions? Should the IAB be involved other that via the crossover of Chairs and reciprocal liaisons? Should, for example, the traditional but self-constituted Thursday evening draft evaluation group be consulted -- certainly their work is significantly impacted by a shift to all-remote meetings? No, I'm not serious about the latter and maybe the current group is the right group to be making these decisions, but, in the context of the IETF, a group coming together and announcing that there is an emergency and they have decided they are in charge should not turn them into a permanent decision body without community discussion and consent. Similarly, the LLC Board, as I have understood it, is supposed to be responsible for thinking about things strategically and to be at least minimally accountable to the community for that thinking. We aren't seeing much evidence of strategic thinking and planning that should have, IMO, been well underway in March. Instead, we are seeing announcements of fees and associated arrangements with the same "emergency", "we have decided", and "no time to consult the community, even about principles" discussion we saw in March. Probably all of that, including the fee arrangements, are irreversible (and unlikely to cause any permanent harm), but it would be good for us to hear from the people and groups involved about their plans to prevent this -- specifically the assertion that decisions with potential impact on principles and/or the standards process can and should be made by claiming an emergency and time pressures that could not be anticipated-- from happening again. The way that IETF 107 decisions were made was a legitimate response to a crisis that could not have been anticipated. Maybe (although I obviously doubt it), so was the decision about IETF 108. But, if we end up having the same process and discussion-making in October, that would have the ring of top-down governance with, e.g., a Nomcom appointment conveying "do what thou wilt" auth0rity. > I personally see having documented fee waivers as consistent > with this early un-published principle on not checking badges. Really? With an upper limit of 100 such waivers and a lottery? Is that more fair than someone dropping a note to Phill or one of his successors saying "I don't have funds to get to this meeting, can you waive the registration fee"? Probably. Certainly more transparent and immune from claims of favoritism or abuse. And maybe only 96 people will ask and no one will be deterred from asking because, while they can't afford the fee, they either feel that it would be better to just not participate than to ask or that they should not ask because someone in even more difficult circumstances might be cut off? Don't know. Given those possibilities, would it have been better, if there are 150 applicants, to announce that (at least to the applicants) and give people a chance to voluntarily withdraw their requests? I don't know about that either, nor do I know if that sort of option was considered; what I do know is that there as been zero opportunity for meaningful and effective community discussion and input. And, again, I'm less concerned with trying to second-guess the decisions with registrations supposedly opening this week than I am about making sure that we don't do things this way again. And, in that regard, "Finally, please note that no decision has been made on whether or not a fee for online participation is needed when we return to in-person meetings." [2] is not comforting. I'm certain it is true and therefore that it is a reasonable thing to say. However, in the absence of mention of any other process to revisit models or made decisions, it can reasonably be interpreted as "the way we made these decisions is the way we intend to do it in the future". And, whether we agree about the waiver plan as appropriate mitigation of a suddenly-imposed fee, one agrees with Stephen and any myself about whether the LLC has the authority to make the binary "charge or no charge" decision about remote participants, or how one feels about whether (as Andrew asked) observing in real time is an important principle for all-remote meetings, I hope that at least most of us can agree that those are legitimate questions for us to expect the community to be able to address [3] even if the dollar amounts of the fee structure are issues that we have delegated to the LLC (and that should stay delegated). thanks, john [1] I am not ignoring the SHMO proposal. But, "let's make a WG and see if we discuss it there" would also have been reasonable in March. Instead, a mailing list was created to discuss the relevant issues (fine plan) and now that mailing list is being charged with designing a charter for that WG. Under normal circumstances, another fine plan. But, unless there is a firm commitment to accelerate things and a plan about doing that, the IETF's "normal" in recent years would predict some time for discussions, a BOF at IETF 108 if the discussions on manycouches [4] converge in the next four days and otherwise at IETF 109, creation of the actual WG, and... I hope that Alissa's plan (per her note on the 3rd) to move toward SHMO chartering this week without a BOF will eliminate that potential problem but it would be truly unfortunate if it got to be 2021 and we were still making decisions on an ad hoc basis with the reason being "waiting for the WG" rather than "emergency". [2] https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf108-registration-fees/ [3] I note that Jay has pointed out, on-list, that the decision and fee structure model used for IETF 108 could easily be adapted for future meetings. I took that as just a default (and an obvious one) so have no problem with his pointing it out. But, absent a statement about community review of principles or a plan for asking for and getting community input, it would appear that the decisions about principles are out of the community's hands. [4] Interestingly, the "manycouches" list does not appear on https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/nonwg, perhaps because it was announced as a design team effort rather that a discussion group for potentially forming a WG.
