Hi John, thank you for this wakeup call. I agree that we are on a slippery slope with interims. I also believe that we haven’t slipped yet. I base that on the two WGs that I participate in regularly that have bi-weekly interims. This rhythm means that agendas that follow up on one meeting to prepare the next cannot be ready weeks in advance, which would mean right after each previous meeting. In one WG, we were slipping a bit late with the agenda and have since managed to move that back a bit. We still allow fine tuning the agenda, but I don’t think we would accept that if there were disagreement (and agenda bashing right at the start of a meeting is another long-standing tradition). So my summary would be to keep “doing the right thing”: I.e., keep in mind that it’s easy to have order deteriorate, and stop that when we see that happening. New rules are unlikely to help; they are more likely to make the meetings inefficient. Of course, all WGs are different, so what I’m seeing may not be what you are seeing; maybe something more drastic is needed in other places. In my corner of the IETF, I have a lot of trust in the WG chairs and ADs getting this right. Grüße, Carsten
