As I said earlier, there is evidence that only a small fraction (10%?) of
the ietf list is interested enough in policy/process/admin to subscribe to
lists on those topics. So using my imperfect measurement above, we find that
at a generous estimate, 6% of IETF participants care about policy/process/admin.
2. The IESG should not consider the IETF discussion list as an
appropriate venue for notifying IETF participants of its actions
or items under consideration.
That's not new. The formal channel has been ietf-announce (which is not a
discussion list) for 20+ years. True, the IESG sometimes puts the ietf list
in Cc:, but since ietf-announce is not a discussion list, that's a natural
thing to do. Thus:
More suitable channels include the
IETF Announcements list and the GENDISPATCH Working Group,
depending on the notification.
is standard operating procedure.
3. The IESG should not consider the IETF discussion list as
representative of the broader IETF community.
Then where can the IESG go for that? (Of course, when something reaches
a formal Last Call, we know the answer, but that is the very last stage
in discussing a topic).
4. IETF participants who wish to make proposals about or discuss the
IETF's direction, policy, meetings and procedures should do so in
GENDISPATCH or other Working Group, if one more specific to that
topic should exist.
Here's where it gets tricky. That is indeed what should happen as a
proposal crystallizes. But is the draft really saying that the plenary
discussion list shouldn't be used for the early rounds of discussion of
an IETF-wide topic? That such topics should be discussed *from the start
to finish* by the self-selected 6% or fewer of participants who are process
wonks? That the rest of the IETF will only hear about it when a Last Call
comes out?
That sounds like mushroom management to me.
5. IETF participants who wish to make proposals about or discuss
technical issues should do so in the most appropriate Working
Group or Area mailing list to the topic
That's mainly what people do. Just occasionally somebody (usually not
a regular participant) sends a technical query to the ietf list, and
usually gets politely redirected. I think it's great when that happens.
7. There should be no explicit or implicit requirement for IETF
leadership or any other person to be subscribed to the IETF
discussion list.
I absolutely utterly violently disagree. I must confess that the day
I stepped down from the IAB, I dropped the ietf list, but after a year
or so I realised that just wasn't viable unless I only wanted to work
in my own tiny corner of the protocol stack, and I rejoined. (There is
a handy delete button in my MUA, which I have always used very freely on
ietf@xxxxxxxx threads.)
It isn't acceptable to me that IAB or IESG members would *not* keep an
eye on the list.
In summary, I think the proposed changes would change the list from
being mainly useful but sometimes toxic, to being mainly toxic and rarely
useful.
Regards
Brian Carpenter
On 17-Aug-20 13:00,
internet-drafts@xxxxxxxx wrote:
A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
Title : Rechartering the IETF Discussion List
Author : Mark Nottingham
Filename : draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00.txt
Pages : 7
Date : 2020-08-16
Abstract:
This document updates RFC3005, the charter of the IETF discussion
list.
The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter/
There are also htmlized versions available at:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00
Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
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