I'm afraid I have to agree with Bron on this. > On Sat, Sep 25, 2021, at 12:56, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > 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. This aspect of the IETF process was in its death throes back in 2000-2004 when I was on the IESG and should have been pronouced dead a few years after that. Not only was any sort of truly comprehensive cross-area review becoming increasingly difficult due to growth in technical complexity, comments when made were starting to be met with increasing hostility. (And while some of the latter was pure NIH, a lot of it was reluctance to spending the time to try and explain things requiring a deep understanding of both the technology as well as how we got to this point to people who, expertise in their own areas notwithstanding, had no real familiarity with the subject matter.) And yes, I'm well aware (and so, unfortunately, is my wife) of the potential value of having to explain something to someone who is capable but who isn't immersed in the subject matter. I also know the various anecdotes where this has proved to provide invaluable insights. But, to take the obvious example, not every problem is as important as a shuttle crash and not every outside reviewer is as smart as Richard Feynman. So the sad reality is that the possible benefits of cross-area review don't seem to justify the cost. Or maybe they do, but we have structured things so that we're oblivious to it. For exmaple, ART only deals with a very small fraction of application protocol development. This has led to the development of entire protocol ecosystems like the one associated with Java. I think I can safely say that a little more cross area review here, especially in regards to security, might have been helpful in this case. But no matter how much any of may dislike the present situation, we are where we are. As it happens I think we are focusing on the wrong problem here (more on that later), but that may be because I use filtering rules so I don't have to look at I-Ds, last calls, and comments on drafts in areas I don't follow, and so don't really care how the IETF structures the way it sends stuff out. (This is beauty of email, as opposed to dumpster fires like Slack.) > I would pretty strongly push back again this. There are whole areas of the > IETF in which I have no interest, or even if I have interest, I have no special > expertise that would make my contribution on them valuable. I rather suspect you're selling yourself short here in regards to the potential value of your input, but that's beside the point. None of us are getting paid to do this sort of thing, and nobody has a right to demand that you take an interest that you don't see any benefit in following. > I'm significantly more interested in seeing everything in my area (ART) > because I'm more likely to have something of value to add - but even there, > it's a wide enough cross section that there are parts I don't particularly need > to know about and spend mental energy on. Exactly right. Mental energy is precious. > And I'm pretty invested and interested in the IETF compared to plenty of > people who want to come in and work on one particular thing. If we want the > IETF to be welcoming and non-overwhelming to new people, making "you have to > have an opinion on every piece of work in the firehose" be the default is > pretty unfriendly. It just doesn't scale. Also a very good point. Ned
