On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 23:03 Spencer Dawkins at IETF <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Should I chime in? Oh, why not. I'm only chatting about one part of Ned's note ...
>
> On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 9:02 AM <ned+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 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 don't think anyone can deny that we are where we are, so let's start there. Are we good with where we are, or is it worth some of us spending cycles thinking about how an organization made up of smart volunteers working on a broad range
of somewhat interrelated topics can be better?
-
think good cross-area review, or even communication, is important, and
-
whatever is happening now isn't sufficient to continue to provide better cross-area awareness/understanding/communication/review than other SDOs which may not have any cross-area approval step between (using our terminology) the working group approving a document,
possibly an area approving it, and it being published,
> What should that subset of us do, to try to make things better?
> There are things we've tried in the past, and it might be useful for some of us who remember (for instance) https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/icar/about/, which was IIRC focused
on cross-area reviews, and the much more recent "technology deep dives" (for example, https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/wgtlgo/about/), which *I* intended as ways to get (for the first one, people from
routing, the internet area, transport, and ops) into the same room, and talk about how something that one area specifies, and other areas make decisions that affect how useful the "something" is.
> It might also be useful for some of us to think about what we haven't tried yet (and I might suggest having a conversation about whether we should focus on cross-area awareness, understanding, communication, or review, as a starting point.
> And those are, of course, only my opinions. Perhaps other people might have other helpful suggestions about what we should do?
> The green flag drops, and they're off ... maybe ,,,
If there is no agreement that cross-area working is important then a discussion about separating the IETF into multiple SDOs, one for each area, would seem to be a reasonable next step. If however, there
is consensus that cross-area working is important, perhaps alongside a greater focus on reinforcing the sense of community within the IETF, then it needs more action than the restructuring of some existing mailing lists and/or creation of some new ones.
So I agree with Spencer that further discussion is needed to agree on the right starting point before identifying solutions. I’d add that this seems to me to be pretty important to the long-term health of
the IETF as an organisation and simply focusing on mailing lists detracts from what should be a key activity. [Fixing communications issues like mailing lists of course matters too but this can be addressed once the core problems are properly identified as
part of a broader set of actions]. Others will no doubt have views on the best way to proceed within the appropriate IETF structures.
Andrew
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