Sorry, I've been paying attention to some other, seemingly more
urgent, things, and am only now catching up on this subthread.
First, thanks for separating it from my concerns about meeting
guidelines, etc.
Second, I agree with Joel and Bob: one thing we don't need is
another "Announce" list in which most of the traffic is, for any
given IETF participant, noise.
Third, I'm fascinated by Christian's idea of allowing someone to
subscribe to a "follow" list for a WG. Let me try what might be
a different version of the same idea or perhaps a different one.
Suppose every WG had two mailing lists, the primary one as we
think about WG lists today (and have for many years) and a
subset list, almost Announce-like, that was expected to be about
WG events, not discussions. While some guidance, such as
document adoptions (or the start of discussions about them) and
WGLC, would probably be appropriate, and meeting announcements
to the WG and agendas would almost certainly belong there, I
think that, because of differences among WGs, it would be
reasonable to leave it to WG Chairs to figure out what to
announce. If WG chairs routinely got the balance wrong,,
informal conversations with them, or, if necessary, with the
responsible AD, would be in order to help them calibrate.
Such per-WG announcements would permit people who were
interested in the WG's work but who lacked the time, energy, or
expertise to follow it closely (e.g., subscribe to its regular
mailing list), to watch it, looking in when appropriate. One
can imagine someone who was asked to do an early review
subscribing to the announce list for the WG for a while to find
out about relevant developments (e.g., a planned meeting with
the document on the agenda) and than dropping back off after a
while. Someone who questioned details of a charter might want
to watch for a while to understand whether those concerns were
justified. On can even imagine such a list concept being useful
to ADs who lack the time to follow all of their WGs by reading
their normal mailing lists still benefiting from an orderly way
to hear about important events, attained benchmarks, etc.
>From the standpoint of active participants in the WG, this would
not represent a change. From that of WG Chairs, they would need
to be sensitive about the difference between discussion and
announcements and send to WGNAME@xxxxxxxx or
WGNAME-announce@xxxxxxxx as appropriate, but more awareness of
the difference might be A Good Thing.
The ability of people who are unable to actively participate in
a particular WG but who sent to try to say informed about major
points or transitions in its work might well facilitate early
reviews and/or involvement by people with expertise in related
topics and consequent reviews and discussion.
john
