On 7/17/23 14:08, Christian Huitema wrote:
There are three significant discussion opportunities before IETF last call: adopting the charter of the working group; working group adoption of a draft; and, working group last call of a draft. The charter discussions are already very public, and I assume that someone interested in the subject could contribute, and also decide to join the WG mailing list if interested.
It's hard to fix things at charter time, though many try to do so. Sometimes it's simply premature - people can't really anticipate all the ways a WG can cause harm, and craft charter language to keep those things from happening. Sometimes a WG does get started in the wrong direction and charter language can occasionally help. But more often, a WG gets started with a reasonable charter and goes "astray" (yes this is subjective) long before LC.
At the time a draft is adopted is also often too early. Though sometimes a WG is told to use a specific draft. Whenever there's a draft on the table and for whatever reason, anyone with an alternative view basically has to propose their own draft overnight in order to have it considered. Most WG participants just want to make "progress" and will accept a draft on the table without much review. So draft adoption time is generally an inopportune time to offer an alternative proposal. If nothing else, any alternative proposal has to be at least as complete as the existing proposal in order to be considered. So it's a bit of a race, and the original proposal has an advantage even if it has significant problems.
WG mailing lists are very time consuming, and of course these days it's common to have some of the discussion on github. If you join from day one, or nearly so, you might be able to make useful contributions. If you start a few months late, it's much harder. This is part of why I think WGs need to maintain summaries of discussions had and (tentative) decisions made, along with lists of factors that influenced those decisions - to help relative newcomers catch up so that they can contribute usefully.
I suppose we could somehow broadcast adoption calls and WG last calls to the IETF -- with a caveat that any discussion should be inside the working group. Discuss?
While a good idea, there are already so many broadcasts that I suspect few people want to read all of that traffic just in case they'll see something that they care about. We need a way to let people subscribe to such calls via WG, area, or topic.
Keith
