+1. I'm very concerned about WGs going off the rails in this way. On 9/22/20 12:56 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
My major concern with this idea is that it takes us further in the direction of a collection of WGs, each holding several online meetings a year (many of them significantly more than three meetings). Unless we are very careful --and maybe if we are-- that can leads to a "we can meet online when we want to, so the meetings really make the decisions with mailing lists only for pro forma conformation". I don't know about others, but I've already seen trends in that direction since March. It also moves the IETF further toward being an umbrella organization that charters WGs and signs off on their work rather than one that fosters communication among people and groups in different, but related, areas of work and thereby promotes interoperability among different types of protocols. We know lots of SDOs that work that way; if we are going to turn into one of them, we had best make it a conscious decision rather than backing into it via more and more WG meetings that are independent of each other. In addition, while many chairs will do better, "let the WG chairs determine" is a recipe for concentrating a WG's decisions in the hands of the chairs and their friends/ associates/ cronies and being extremely unwelcoming to people with dissenting positions, people who are seen as difficult, and newcomers who don't already have strong affiliations within the WG. So let's be a bit careful about what we wish for.
