On 4/19/21 4:09 PM, Leif Johansson wrote:
On 2021-04-19 21:46, Keith Moore wrote:
On 4/19/21 11:51 AM, Leif Johansson wrote:
In other words, they can spend all of their time politely explaining in detail why proposals are Bad Ideas, instead of getting useful work done.
Point to where the useful work will be done if we don’t stop this.
I don't want to either dismiss your concern (which I share) or sound flippant, but I also wonder where the useful work will be done if we DO stop this.
I appreciate your attempt to keep sticking to your point and trying to be serious
about it but... I just don't buy the IETF as the group of brilliant but tortured
souls who have "snarl" at each other to make themselves heard over the din of "Bad
Ideas".
Well, again, I'm not even sure we're all talking about the same thing
when we use the word "snarling". And while I'm pretty sure that we
need a way to push back on Bad Ideas, I'm not sure that what people are
calling "snarling" is only or even mostly about discouraging Bad
Ideas. Maybe, for example, some of it is about "baggage" - old
resentments for hard-fought battles lost, perceived insults, or even
genuinely bad behavior.
Where is this apocalyptic horde of Bad Ideas that is sucking up all of our precious
resources?
One doesn't have to look very far to find some, just follow ietf@ or any
of several mailing lists. In theory at least, the situation would be
worse if we didn't try to discourage them.
The IETF meetings are growing smaller. Clearly we have figured out how
to turn people away at the door.
With respect, it doesn't follow from just that information. I'm sure we
have surveys which have shown that some people have stopped attending
because of what they perceived as rudeness, but there may be many more
reasons than that.
What is IETF doing these days that's exciting, that helps make the
Internet generally better in a way that's obvious to most participants,
that gives participants a sense of purpose and makes them proud to work
with IETF? I don't think it's the null set, but it's certainly not
like it was 30 years ago when there was a general sense of excitement
about making this wonderful resource available to the world.
In conversations with IETFers I often get a sense of futility, as in
"sure we could theoretically improve X, but we'd have to deal with these
technical constraints and/or these people and/or these Big Companies".
There's a lot more inertia around many kinds of Internet development
than there used to be. It's probably not IETF's fault, so much as a
symptom of success. But it has changed the landscape and how we feel
about our work.
And yet, conditions have changed enough that the constraints around
deployment of new features in some applications protocols and some
layers of the stack may be less than they once were. Understanding where
we can make a positive difference may be as important as understanding
what limitations there are.
Keith
