IESG, I agree with Brian. However, his note suddenly brought something I've been thinking about on and off into focus. While it would be really unfortunate to have it turned into a rule we tried to enforce in any way, perhaps we should be thinking less in terms of "participation in the IETF is free and carries no obligations other than being nice". Instead, we should be thinking more along the lines of "there is a price to participate in the IETF... and it is participating in the IETF". We talk about ourselves as a community and claimed for decades that one of our strengths relative to other standard development organizations was that our participants were concerned about a better Internet, not just agreeing on specifications for a largely disconnected series of products. There will certainly be times when having experts working on particular topics and ignoring just about everything else is necessary and appropriate, but maybe we should be focused more on a healthy and developing Internet, and on an IETF with broad participation, rather than on ways to making it easier to ignore Last Calls and community discussions. Bron is right and I'm not suggesting anything like having to be educated and engaged on "every piece of work in the firehouse" (I don't think Brian was either). But a more general sense of what is going on, including the realization that assignment of particular work to Areas is sometimes arbitrary, can be useful. (Examples omitted to save space.) I think the IETF would benefit if the IESG, when considering fragmenting mailing lists so that people get only those messages they really, really, want or taking other actions that make it easier to not participate except on very narrow work areas, would more obviously consider the costs to the community of doing so. Even if the decisions don't come out differently, I think more obvious attention to those costs would be beneficial. best, john --On Saturday, September 25, 2021 14:56 +1200 Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > I have to say that it never ceases to amaze me that anyone > with a profession or hobby that includes a few IETF WGs would > find 4.6 messages/day a burden. It isn't even noise. However, > so be it, so please try this out. > > My comments: > > 1. Make it explicitly a one-year experiment. If it fails > (fewer than 3095 subscribers, for example), drop it. > > 2. Make it opt-out for meeting registrants. Ideally, it would > also be opt-out for anyone who subscribes to any IETF list > whatever, but I don't know if that's practicable. > > 3. I do object strongly to classifying "Last call > announcements for I-Ds" as non-important. They are such a > fundamental part of the IETF process that they really must go > to everybody, and specifically to everybody who is *not* in > the WG concerned. In fact, this would amount to an end-run > around RFC2026, for standards track and BCP drafts. > > Regards > Brian Carpenter
