Hi Margaret,
At 04:32 12-02-2014, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
It is more complicated than that?
We like to act/think/talk as though "the people
in the room" are a meaningful subset of "the
people on the mailing list", and therefore are
aware of the discussion on the list and can make
tentative decisions that are representative of
the list (to be confirmed on the list later).
The fact is that many of the people in the room
at an IETF meeting are not even subscribed to
the mailing list, and many of the people who are
subscribed to our mailing lists do not read
them. There is also the fact that only a tiny
number of people in the room have looked at the
agenda for this meeting beforehand, and even
fewer have read the drafts on the agenda.
Yes.
of only those people who are most active in the
work year-round. In those organizations, it is
possible for the people in the room (or on the
call) to reach some consensus that is likely to
be representative of the list, and then say "Of
course Bob and Dave aren't here, so we better
run this by the list to make sure that we really have consensus."
That's what the rules of the IETF read like, but
in reality the group of people in the room is
almost entirely disjoint from the group of
people on the list, and in many WGs, _all_ of
the most important decisions have been made in a
meeting room at an IETF plenary meeting (and
merely "confirmed" on the list) for many
years. In other words, most of our work is
_not_ done on the mailing lists, or even by
people who are reading most of the messages that are sent to those lists.
[snip]
That stinks, but if we want to change it, we
need to _do something to change it_. It does
not help to keep stating an untruth as if it were the truth.
Yes.
There are some IETF WGs that operate
differently. They do their work on the mailing
lists and have "interim" meetings or telechats
as needed that are organized on their WG mailing
list. Some of them don't even meet at IETF
meetings, because they see no value in
presenting their work-in-progress to the
masses. It would have an unfortunate impact on
our revenue stream if more groups started
operating that way, as our main sources of
income are tied to attendance at plenary
meetings, but maybe more groups should try this sort of thing, anyway?
It is not worth having a (working group) meeting
if there isn't any major issues to discuss
about. I am not keen about having sloppy minutes
for that discussion as it does not make it easier
for people not in the room to understand what was
discussed and it also does not make matters easier for a non-English audience.
Does anyone have any other ideas about how we
can get back to a point where most of our
decisions are made by people who are active on
the WG mailing list and interested in the work of the group year-round?
I don't think that it is possible to do go back
to an old version of the IETF, assuming that
version actually existed. The incentives are
such that decisions are taken at meetings; it
works to the advantage of people funded by
corporations, it is politically appropriate to
live with an untruth or a half-truth.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy