On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 10:36:20AM +0000, Stewart Bryant wrote: > For web pages use paste-ups so the reviewer and producer can see what > it will look like. That didn't work _either_, since there's been a beta site around for more than a year. It appears to have failed in at least three or maybe four ways: 1. Some number of people didn't look at it or send any comments, but nevertheless feel comfortable adding comments now. I am surprised by the number of comments that began, "I didn't send any comments during the beta, but …" 2. Some number of people believe they sent comments that were not heard. 3. Some number of people believe that "the leadership" or the project did not react correctly to comments that were received. It strikes me also that there could be a fourth issue: 4. Some number of people are not actually unhappy with the new site or the approach, but are unhappy with particular content there. (4) captures the extensive discussion about the photograph from the IGF meeting, which seemed to be conflated with the site redesign because, I suspect, people thought that the new photo was a permanent feature since they were used to an entirely static IETF front page. I'm actually not sure what to do about any of these. The first class I identify above might be told, "You had more than a year to raise issues; sorry, but we do not have infinite time." I'm rather more worried about class 2, though I am not sure how many of those are actually class 3 issues. If we actually have class 2 problems, it suggests some continued problems in the management of our infrastructure. That may not be too surprising given that our administrative structures generally have been showing some strain for the last while; so it may be a symptom of a larger problem. Class 3 issues reflect a failure of consensus on the goals of the site. But that is going to be a problem quite likely forever. In the case of protocols where we fail to meet consensus, there are two possible outcomes: the world moves on without us, or the topic in question really is moribund. In either case, our lack of consensus often doesn't matter that much except for the publication of an RFC or two and whether something is called a "standard". But for our administrative activities, the problem is different, because administrative activities have a progression of their own: simply not acting is a kind of action too. This discussion reminds me that the IETF community is less cohesive than it once was. This is an inevitable consequence of an increasing diversity of population, but it makes consensus on adminstration things much harder. I think class 4 is just an unfortunate conflation. There are questions about the wider cohesion around what we ought to have on the IETF website, and the disagreement about that is perhaps reflected in this particular case, but I think if 1-3 were solved 4 would be at most an annoyance. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx