--On Monday, 21 August, 2023 00:20 +0900 "Martin J. Dürst"
<duerst@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello Rob,
>
> In addition to what Randy (with whom I had the pleasure of
> chairing the WG) already wrote, I have a few
> questions/comments below.
>
> On 2023-08-17 09:24, Rob Sayre wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I think the documents in LTRU suffered.
>>
>> For example, one might point to:
>>
>> "Sometimes language tags are used to indicate additional
>> language attributes of content."
>>
>> So, here you have a questionable preposition. These documents
>> all have them, and the documents seem to have quality issues
>> as a result.
>
> Can you explain what's questionable about this proposition?
> Sorry, not online now, so without context, but this sentence
> seem quite fine to me.
>
> If it's that it sounds vague, then that may well be, but I
> don't think that the WG (or at least part of the WG) meeting
> in person at an IETF would have changed that. How to tag text
> with language tags is inherently more 'fuzzy' than e.g. the
> state machine in a protocol such as TCP. The WG members worked
> very hard (sometimes in my opinion even a bit too hard) to
> eliminate any ambiguities where that was possible, but they
> very much understood the boundaries.
>
> If anything, meeting at an IETF might have helped non-WG
> IETFers to understand that this vagueness is an inherent
> property of some parts of the language tagging task. But the
> outreach effect of a few drop-ins from other WGs and Areas
> attending IETF WG meeting is probably not very high. And the
> same or a stronger effect may be achieved (I hope) with a
> discussion such as this one or an informational document
> (which I might try to write if it turns out there is a real
> need for it).
Although this is getting far beyond the scope of the appeal,
FWIW, agreed.
I know that what I'm about to say will seem really radical, but
if we wanted to raise the odds that IETFers with no substantive
interest in the WG understood the work and tradeoffs, the
second-best way to do that would be to require WGs that didn't
meet regularly at IETF meetings, or maybe all WGs, to expand
their Shepherd's reports, well before IETF LC, to include a
discussion of issues and alternatives considered by the WG in
arriving at its conclusions.
I don't actually think that would be terribly useful, partially
because it would just be too late to engage additional people
who might be interested in the WG's work or some aspects of it,
and that is why I think it is a second-best solution. But
others might disagree.
What would likely be even better is something we used to do and
dropped: a requirement for an "Area Report" at every single IETF
meeting in which the AD(s) or their designees summarized what
was going on in every single WG and what the hot issues were.
That would undoubtedly require a second plenary (we had another
one "back when") and that would mean more tradeoffs against the
demands of WGs who want to meet during IETF. I do, however,
wonder whether we might want those reports in writing before
IETF meetings so that questions could be asked at the plenary.
Suppose those came as reports prepared by each WG summarizing
its work and status and submitted to the ADs, who would then
share them with the community. That might have the added benefit
of making it easier for those ADs to be aware of what "their"
WGs were doing and even to determine whether some WG Chairs were
more worth trusting about maintaining an open and
well-documented process than others.
Again, far outside the subject of the appeal other than that no
such thing should be instituted without community discussion and
consensus.
best,
john
