John, On Wed, 2010-01-06 at 17:13 -0500, John C Klensin wrote: > I am extremely concerned about getting into a situation in which > the IETF spends time debating issues that are basically > minutiae, designing (or fine-tuning) procedures or naming > schemes in a committee of a few thousand. *Getting* into a situation? The IETF spends a great deal of its time in such activities, and has at least for the last 10 years or so (there may have been a "golden age" before that, although it seems unlikely to me). I think the reality is that there are certain technical issues that: 1. Are simple enough that everyone can understand them 2. Have no completely obvious solution These issues invite long, pointless threads discussing them. Things that require a lot of time to understand the details tend to only have a small handful of experts who discuss them, because there aren't that many people who have the time and/or motivation to get up to speed. Things that have a clear solution tend to only have a few net kooks who argue (loudly, repeatedly, rudely) against this solution. I think a number of process and other efforts have been made over the decades to try to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of IETF discussions. I don't know how successful these have been - perhaps the IAB has metrics on this? I have no further proposals, except perhaps less wringing of hands over the fact that we seemly waste a lot of time arguing over not-so-important stuff. Oh, and we might also remind people who have drafts caught up in a vortex of endless nitpicking that it's not their fault, and there is nothing wrong with their drafts. (Good luck Joe!) :) -- Shane _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf