--On Monday, 10 April, 2023 00:27 -0400 Keith Moore
<moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Yes, Github does have some features that can be used to
>> support collaboration. But it is a collaboration flow engine
>> wrapped around a source code management system and it is
>> really not built for what we need for our work. So while it
>> has some advantages, you have to be using Github **in a
>> collaborative setting** pretty much every day to remember
>> how it all works. The notion of forking a repository so I can
>> submit a pull request in order to comment on something is
>> obscurantism at best.
>
> Agree. Really it's more of a coincidence that github can
> be made to work at all for collaboration on IETF documents,
> and it only works because lots of IETFers already know git
> and/or github, and IETF uses XML for its editable document
> format. But from a different point of view, both of those
> choices (git and XML) make it more difficult for people to
> participate effectively in IETF. And I still think that early
> in a document's life cycle, generating pull requests is a
> really poor way to collaborate, and not only because of the
> baroque user interface. PRs only work for collaborating on
> a technical specification when the document is already
> relatively mature and most of the changes needed are fairly
> localized.
FWIW, I agree. I have also suggested that they make it much
harder to track what is going on with a particular document and
WG without carefully following every change (or an active WG
every day). That is presumably not a problem for those who have
gotten used to that way of working and who are working most
actively on a document, but it inevitably tends to discourage
input from those who, while less involved, may have other
experience and perspectives that should allow us to avoid traps
and improve documents.
If we are going to continue on the current path, I look forward
to a clear statement that people cannot expect to participate
actively in the IETF unless they are fluent and comfortable with
github and introductory and tutorial materials sufficient to
bring newcomers (to the IETF or the tools) up to that level.
Without that, we are, IMO, setting ourselves up for failure.
john
