--On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 10:23 -0700 IESG Secretary <iesg-secretary@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > The IESG has issued a Statement on Guidance on In-Person and > Online Interim Meetings: > > 14 August 2023 > > This statement provides IESG guidance on hybrid and online > interim IETF working group (WG) meetings. > > Read more: > > https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meet > ings-guidance/ IESG, (I am bypassing the normal procedure of a discussion with the IETF Chair before creating an appeal because there was a discussion with him about some of the issues in the prior version of the guidelines, including a request that those issues be considered as part of another appeal and any resulting rewriting. Most of those have not been addressed and are reiterated below.) While I appreciate the effort to update this document, this revision raises several concerns (most raised earlier and not addressed) in addition to including a key statement, apparently as justification, that I do not believe to be true. (1) The guidelines for online interim meetings now read as if they can reasonably be run as effectively closed sessions, announced only to those who happen to be on the mailing list of that WG. There is not even a requirement to let the responsible AD know that the meeting is being scheduled (the text says "should discuss" which would not be requirement even if "should" were in upper case). That is less open than we usually require, exclusionary of those who are not very active WG participants, potentially hostile to newcomers, and, most important, undermines the traditions of encouraging IETF participants to look in on WGs in which they are not actively participating and hence undermining cross-area reviews prior to IETF Last Call except when WG Chairs explicitly ask for those reviews. There are more quibbles about that section including about timing of the "reminders" for recurring meetings. (2) For hybrid meetings, the decision as to whether "extended sequences" of such meetings are needed and acceptable appears to be left entirely to the WG, even though, unlike online meetings, AD approval of some type is required (but, for a sequence, it is not clear what the AD has to approve). That raises most of the same issues as above. (3) The statement "Interim meetings of any type are integral to the IETF way of working," is, AFAICT, false. Every WG that has managed to get through all of its work in the last quarter-century without holding even one interim meeting is a counterexample. Perhaps it is the intention of the IESG to change that or perhaps the IESG is just adjusting to trends in that direction, but those would be rather fundamental changes, for which see the next two items. (4) We can repeat the requirements of RFC 2418 (especially Section 3.2) as often as we like but the reality is that, especially if a WG moves to regularly scheduled and frequent interim meetings, those meetings (and not mailing lists) are almost certain to become the primary discussion venue for the WG. In many cases (and I think I have seen examples), if a WG becomes used to working that way, "reviewed and confirmed on the mailing list" becomes a note to the mailing list saying something close to "the interim decided XYZ; anyone with serious objections should speak up". (5) Almost separate from the above, but equally or more important, portions of this document are essentially an update or reinterpretation of RFC 2418. As such, with the probable exception of the discussion of visas and meeting invitations, establishing policies like those outlined by an internal IESG discussion and IESG Statement violates principles about community decision-making established in the wake of the Kobe incident as well as the provisions of BCP 9 (RFC 2026 and updates). This policy document should be presented to the community in I-D form, discussed and revised as needed, and then subjected to IETF Last Call. Unless the IESG believes that it can fairly and objectively evaluate Last Call comments on a document that it wrote and approved, it should devise some other way for the Last Call to be evaluated such as handoff to the IAB. thanks, john
