Andrew, I very much agree on categories. My thought had been that, if we construct an easily-accessed and easily-remembered page for the second group with a minimum of decoration, images, etc., it would largely deal with the third issue as a side effect, but that is probably worth more consideration. And yes to the effort and consultation -- much appreciated. john --On Friday, July 21, 2017 04:32 -0400 Andrew Sullivan <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 11:13:10AM +0200, Yoav Nir wrote: >> The new site is focused not on the existing people active in >> the IETF. It's focused on the general public. The place >> where work gets done these days is datatracker. >> > > I have had a look at the beta site, and it seems to me that we > have at least three possible audiences: > > 1. People who wonder what an IETF is and how it might be > useful to them. That actually is an important function of > a website, and despite the arguments about how the IETF > isn't about marketing organization (and the xkcd > observations about university websites) we cannot ignore > this function. To some extent, we are competing with > other ways of developing the Internet -- "living standards", > code as standard, multilateral standards bodies, &c -- and if > we think our way is good for some cases we do in fact need > to market that. I think the beta site is obviously better > at that than our current site, which appears to be > designed with a MEMBERS ONLY sign on the front. We are > the hardest club to join given that we don't have > membership. I think the beta site is trying to make that > burden a little less, and I believe it is a good thing. > > 2. People who already are familiar with the IETF and are > working here. The beta site says it's supposed to be the > "new front door". I don't know about all of you, but in > my own house I also know how to enter by the other doors. > Maybe we just need to use a different entrance? > > 3. People whose connectivity makes the more graphically > intense and somewhat larger site less useful. I think it > would be useful to analyse the extent to which this is a > real problem, and whether the trade-off is adequate for > the particular use case we have in mind. After all, > loading this (still not huge) web page is hardly the most > bandwidth-intensive thing a plausible IETF participant is > likely to do. Moreover, it's not clear whether the problem in > this case is slow backhaul links or slow local/last-mile > links; if it's the latter, more IXes (and CDNs) are likely > good enough mitigations. This seems like an issue that > could use some empirical data, but I am not sure how to > get it. Perhaps the participants of GAIA would hae some > ideas. > > I appreciate the effort to make these changes in public with > lots of consultation: I know how much harder it is to run a > project this way, but I think it's a good sign that the tools > are as usual being developed this way. > > Best regards, > > A