On 7/16/23 13:10, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:
We can't define what "watching" means, because anyone can read the WG's traffic without subscribing to the list. The archives are publicly accessible on the web, and via the IETF's public IMAP server.Consensus is judged by those who speak up. The total number of list
subscribers doesn't matter much, because it's fairly normal to have lots
of "watchers". Their silence should not be considered as either support
or lack of support.
Those who speak up are few WG participants and usually they are the ones who direct/request the design teams (DT) and Interim_Groups (IG) but not the IETF WG. Also we need to define what watching means when we are using WG list (e.g. some WG give a month or less to see consensus of adoption agreement). This thread can be arguing that IG has no much watching because it excludes others. However, I don't believe that it is correct to say remotely_watching can be defined while not making watching easy to track information/signals.
More broadly, IETF WG discussions are necessarily public for the sake of transparency. Just because someone is watching doesn't mean that they even have an opinion on the discussions.
Keith
