Hi. I am seeing a situation in which the IETF's perceived or claimed goals, the guidelines intended to accomplish those goals (and how they are interpreted), and the actual practices seem to be inconsistent. While this note was stimulated by a few particular examples, it appears to me that everyone involved has acted in good faith, following the guidelines as they understood them or making honest and reasonable mistakes so I hope we can look forward to what we want rather than getting dragged down into details about the past. Since I've been involved in the IETF, the main reasons given for insisting that WG announce their meetings (especially interim ones) in advance, and even post agendas in advance, has been to invite attendance by interested IETF participants (or even interested parties who do not see themselves as active IETF participants). To the extent to which we are actually trying to do outreach to other communities and bring new people into the IETF, including more diverse groups, that same sort of public advance announcement of meetings (and agenda) is vital. Otherwise, we are at risk of WGs turning into private clubs with people with shared interests, background, assumptions, and possibly narrow goals talking only with each other. In addition, for people too involved with other work to follow a WG's mailing list or every step in document evolution, observation of what is going on in a WG and in its discussions is essential to the sort of broader review and input that we would like to avoid showing up for the first time during IETF LC (if then). Some recent discussions that have claimed the IETF published certain protocols in error and because of insufficiently broad reviews indirectly highlight that point. RFC 2418 provides for "interim" meetings, including what we now call virtual ones, applying to them all of the rules for "advance notification, reporting, open participation, and process, which apply to other working group meetings". The other documents that are now part of BCP 25 do not appear to me to make any changes in those requirements. At least partially because of the pandemic, the IESG has provided several version of guidance for interim meetings. The current guidance [1] clarifies the rules for such meetings and relaxes them somewhat compared to a narrow reading of 2418. However, that guidance can be interpreted as fairly close to "virtual interims are for active WG participants and no one else is particularly relevant". It seems to me that an interpretation like that would be ok for a design team but is questionable for a WG and potentially damaging to the IETF if WGs and the IESG use that interpretation. The reason for this note is to see if others agree or if I'm seriously in the rough. In particular, see the bullet list in the Guidance statement under "The guidelines for online interim meetings of IETF working groups..." and note that... (1) The current guidance for virtual interims apparently does not require ADs to be involved with, or sign off on, such meetings and their schedules. It does say that plans should (lower case) be discussed with them, but that is about it. That is perhaps consistent with recent discussions along the lines of "trust the WG chairs" but, if questions arise about the appropriateness of such a meeting and who was or was not realistically invited, it might be good to have them aware that it is being held. (2) The discussions on mtgvenue and elsewhere have let many of us to the conclusion that, if we want to be fair to present and potential participants, there are no perfect timezones and, at least, some rotation is in order (that is, of course, also the argument for primary reliance on email rather than meetings or other real-time conversations). But the guidance says "allow fair access for all working group participants". If that includes "potential participants", no problem. If it is construed as "already active participants --either who are on the WG mailing list or a subset of them", it promotes a closed group. (3) It is not clear that the announcement two weeks in advance is required to be to IETF-Announce or whether announcement to the WG list is sufficient. It is unclear what the Secretariat is expected to do when a request arrives less, potentially even much less, than two weeks before the meeting if there are grounds to believe that active WG participants know it is coming. Similarly, there is no guidance to the WG Chairs or ADs (or, in principle, the Secretariat) if agendas do not show up on the WG list (and, presumably, the datatracker although the guidance doesn't say that) at least a week in advance of the scheduled time. Note that the latter issue may apply to in-person meetings during IETF as well -- there have been several incidents during recent IETF meetings in which agendas have neither been announced on WG lists not appeared on the agenda pages until a day or two before the WG session (or later). (4) The historical rules against interim meetings being held close to an IETF meeting apparently do not apply to virtual interims, which can apparently be held during the prior or subsequent few days or even overlapping the main meeting. I can propose some specific changes to the Guidance statement if people think that would be justified, but the key question right now is whether everyone is ok with the current situation, including holding interim meetings on very short notice to anyone outside the WG, without ADs having any responsibility to be involved and sign off on them, without agendas at least a week in advance, and/or very close to IETF f2f meetings. And, of course, if we need to make changes, whether that is appropriately done by asking the IESG to tune the Guidance statement(s) or whether it is time to prepare an update for 2418 about this set of topics. thanks, john [1] https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance/
