--On Thursday, September 30, 2021 15:05 -0400 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 9/26/21 1:14 PM, John C Klensin wrote: > >> Let me suggest one small example: When a WG decides to >> schedule an interim meeting, that announcement should go to >> the WG list and_maybe_ to an Area-wide list for the relevant >> area, not to IETF-announce. > > As much as I hate the excessive number of announcements, the > problem I have with this idea is that the most important > decisions tend to be made in interim meetings. Interim > meetings are sometimes used as a way to railroad decisions > through WGs by making them "done deals" before they attract > wider attention. Keith, noting Brian's comment about 2026 and adding to it that making any important decision in a meeting of any sort rather than on a mailing list violates other (IMO, even more important) rules, my suggestion was based on an assumption that I'm wondering if you share. That assumption was that, if someone was not following a WG to the extent of its being on its mailing list, the odds of their seeing a schedule announcement for an interim meeting of a particular WG and thereby deciding to participate in that meeting are pretty low. Not zero -- I've done it myself as part of tracking a WG I'm concerned about but don't have time to follow in-depth -- but rather low. And, again, if we are really going to try to tune things by creating lots of different mailing lists, that "want to keep an eye on but not follow" behavior is an argument for announce-WG lists, not for keeping all of those announcements for all WGs on the main IETF-announce one. > But of course the real problem isn't too many announcements, > so much as over-use of interim meetings. But burying > announcements for interim meetings would seem to exacerbate > that problem. I think the principle that interim meetings > are subject to the same rules for approval and announcement as > other meetings, is the right principle. Again, see Brian's comments. However, the other principle, from long before the pandemic, was to try to minimize interim meetings in favor of encouraging working on mailing lists. That principle was established, IMO, because thoughtful emails --rather than quick notes trying to simulate instant messages of various sorts -- permitted and encouraged broader participation, precisely because it made the discussions asynchronous and immune from excluding people based on location. I don't think the pandemic caused the increase in the number of interims, but it has certainly accelerated it. > Of course (especially in these pandemic days) interim meetings > have arguably become the "normal" meetings, with the > 3-per-year meetings becoming the odd ones. But therein lies, I think, the real issue. If the new reality is that we are rarely going to meet in person with a large fraction of the most active and influential participants present, it seems to me that we should be looking carefully at all aspects of how we do things, not just trying to patch around issues one at a time (as might be appropriate for problems and changes we expect to last for a year or so (or a few meeting cycles) followed by a return to "normal" (or at least status quo ante). And, if some of what is driving changes is just evolutionary with the pandemic as a nasty coincidence, does that make a difference or just make it a tad more important to ask basic questions? > Still, a periodic IETF-wide calendar that's sent to the list > where meetings are announced, might be a good replacement for > all of the current individual announcements. Yes, especially if we continue, for multiple reasons including those you have given, with individual announcements to relevant WG mailing lists. Coming back to Brian's comment about the announcement requirement in 2026, today's question for interested protocol lawyers is whether that language requires individual per-meeting announcements or whether a combined multi-meeting announcement (in calendar form and/or otherwise would suffice to satisfy that requirement. I note that, when we announce an IETF meeting, we have never sent individual announcements of each WG that intends to meet to IETF-announce. best, john
