Hi Dave,
I am not Jari, but I do have an opinion on your thoughts below...
On 7/29/13 1:25 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
I've been finding discussion and actions about newcomers far more
interesting this year, than most previous ones. So I think it's worth
pressing on several fronts, to see how we can both accommodate such folk
better, as well as be clear about when and where and how such
accommodation is /and is not/ appropriate.
Your reply to me, above, lists different types of new folk -- and of
course the list is reasonable and might be useful -- but I didn't see
the actual clarification of what you felt was wrong in the target text
or how you agreed with me an others. So, now you've got me curious for
that detail...
And while I've got the floor I'll offer a thought I had after a brief
conversation with Jari at last night's reception:
Warning: This calls for working groups to do a little more work.
The working group home page and the working group wiki have become
excellent tools for assembling relevant documents. For someone trying
to get started in the wg, these are incredibly helpful.
My suggestion is for a 'status' page that gives a brief summary
about the current state of the working group, ideally listing the
current, near-term vector of the work -- what's the current focus of
effort -- and major open issues.
I'll suggest that it be updated after every meeting.
Arguably, this sort of status statement is good to have even without
newcomers, since it forces working groups to face the question of what
progress they are and are not making.
An exercise like this can be cast as onerous or helpful, depending upon
the surrounding organizational 'tone' we use. In a supportive
environment, the exercise is helpful. In a hostile one, not so much.
Basically, if a wg is being diligent and candid in summarizing its
problems (as well as progress) the rest of us have an obligation to be
helpful.
One of the things that I ask the Internet Area chairs to do is send in a
summary of their WG after each IETF meeting. Those summaries generally
give folks a good idea of the current state of each WG. I post those
summaries on the Internet Area wiki. An alternative that would work as
well is to have each WG post summaries to their own wikis. Each WG has
a wiki available via their Tools page (e.g.,
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/6man/trac/wiki).
I like seeing the summaries from my chairs and I have gotten feedback
from participants that they find them quite useful for keeping up with
WGs that are tangential to their primary focus. I would encourage every
WG chair to periodically summarize the state of their WG/drafts.
Regards,
Brian