Dear John, The IESG has reviewed your appeal of the IESG statement titled “Guidance on In-Person and Online Interim Meetings” published on August 14, 2023 [1]. Based on our review of the process-related points presented, our assessment is that this IESG statement does not violate any community decision-making principles and/or would need to be converted into an Internet-Draft and subjected to an IETF Last-Call. The remainder of this email will comment on the individual points you raised in the appeal. The first point of your appeal claims that the IESG statement would allow the running of online interim meetings as “effectively closed sessions, announced only to those who happen to be on the mailing list of that WG”. That is factually incorrect. Interim working group meetings cannot be closed; the IESG statement quotes from RFC2418 to stress that open participation is a requirement of all working group meetings, including interim meetings. Also, working group meetings of any form are not only announced to the working group mailing list; the datatracker also sends the announcement to the ietf-announce email list and adds it to various subscribable calendars. It is true that in rare cases, some interim meetings were only - manually - announced to the working group mailing list and not also ietf-announce. In all cases of which IESG is aware, a working group chair was unaware that interim meetings are scheduled through the datatracker so that the necessary announcements are automatically sent. The responsible Area Directors clarified this, reminding the chairs of the procedure documented on the chairs’ wiki [2]. Even in these rare cases, the resulting meetings were not “effectively closed sessions” - the working group was still informed of the meeting. We have since added interim meeting procedures as a topic for the working group chairs’ training events. It is correct that since the 2008 revision of the IESG statement in question [6], online interim meetings have not required Area Director approval. The IESG is not aware of an instance where an Area Director had concerns about an online interim meeting one of their Working Groups was scheduling, or even was surprised by them. Even without formal Area Director approval, an Area Director may of course still intercede if they have concerns about the interim meeting planning of their Working Groups. We therefore do not see any issues regarding the openness, inclusivity, accessibility to new participants or the ability of the broader IETF community to observe interim meetings arising from the revision of the IESG statement in question. The second point raised in your appeal is about “extended sequences of hybrid meetings”, and your concern that the determination as to the necessity for such sequences appears to be left to the WG. First, the IESG statement contains text about extended sequences of *online* interim meetings - not *hybrid* ones. Any hybrid interim meeting requires approval by an Area Director. For extended sequences of *online* meetings, the IESG statement requires the chairs to explain to the WG why they believe them to be warranted, and to confirm consensus for them. The responsible Area Director has ample opportunity to review and discuss any concerns with the chairs and the working group at that time. We therefore do not see any issues regarding the openness, inclusivity, accessibility to new participants or the ability of the broader IETF community to observe interim meetings arising from the revision of the IESG statement in question. The third point raised in your appeal was whether interim meetings are an integral part of the IETF way of working. We believe this phrasing in the IESG statement, which first appeared in the revision dated January 11, 2016 [4], to continue to be accurate. In the last ten years, roughly 170 different groups have scheduled interim meetings of some sort [3]. While this is still a fraction of all the groups existing over that period in the IETF, it is a substantial fraction. Additionally, RFC2418 from 1998 already states that interim meetings are “common”, and we believe this has not changed in the meantime. We therefore believe that the phrasing in the IESG statement continues to describe long-standing IETF practice and requires no revision. The fourth point raised in your appeal is that regular and frequent interim meetings may replace the working group email list as the primary discussion venue for a working group. We note that while RFC2418 suggests that most of the business of a working group will be held on its mailing lists, it specifically discusses how in-person meetings can help advance the work, and it requires decisions made at such meetings to be verified on the mailing list. The IESG is not aware of recent cases where working groups may have failed to follow these rules in RFC2418. Naturally, any such situations are grounds for an appeal, and in any case, should be brought to the IESG’s attention. We also do not believe the text of the IESG statement in question to propose or enable any deviations from these rules. The final point in your appeal suggests that giving guidance on interim meetings would need to be done through an update to RFC2418 rather than through an IESG statement. The IESG disagrees with this notion. The IESG is responsible for the technical management of IETF activities and the Internet Standards process. For more than twenty years, various IESGs have publicly documented their procedures for technical management through IESG statements, to improve transparency and give guidance to the community. The second such IESG statement was published on August 29, 2000, on “Guidance on Interim IETF Working Group Meetings and Conference Calls” [5], i.e., the first iteration of the IESG statement in question. The IESG hopes that this response is clear, and we certainly invite you to continue this dialogue with us and with the community as a whole, particularly if you think an update to RFC2418 is warranted. Although this response is presumably not what you desired, the IESG regards the appeal process as an important part of the checks and balances of the IETF Standards Process and hence the IESG would like to thank you for taking the time and effort to formally raise your concerns. – The IESG [1] https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance/ [2] https://chairs.ietf.org/meetings/interim-meeting-instructions [3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/past [4] https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance-2016-01-11/ [5] https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance-2000-08-29/ [6] https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/interim-meetings-guidance-2008-09-02/
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