Hi John,
[Cc to IESG]
At 06:35 AM 07-11-2018, John C Klensin wrote:
remotely early in their IETF careers. We also claim to be
supportive of remote participation, but that needs to be more
than just having the right technology in place. Similar to the
comments that were made about experienced people treating each
other roughly in discussions having a bad effect on newcomers
and observers and discouraging involvement, having a plenary
with no effective way for remote participants to ask questions
or make comments sends a negative message about whether such
participation is really desired. Noting that this is not the
If such participation is not really desired, it is better for the
IESG to say so.
first time in recent years at which questions arriving via
Jabber have been ignored in a plenary (at least this time, it
was caught although much too late) or given no attention, a
relatively experienced IETF participant is likely to respond, as
I am doing, by getting on the mailing list. Someone who is new
and trying to understand whether it is possible to participate
effectively in the IETF may, instead, make an obvious inference
and just go away. From that standpoint, an oversight about
There are barriers to participation in the IETF. The attitude of the
group [1] can act as a signal to go away.
Jabber input (whether in a plenary or a WG session) is at least
as problematic as experienced participants and old friends
calling each other bad names in a WG session. If the assorted
mentoring/ guiding programs for f2f participants are going well,
it may be worse because, by midweek, f2f newcomers may know at
least one or two experienced people whom they could go ask what
is going on (or who might spontaneously be approached by those
people with an explanation). We have no such support for
remote newcomers, despite repeated suggestions.
I mentioned previously that one can "write" a RFC but that won't
change anything. There was a comment about people calling each other
names. What did the Working Group Chair(s) and Responsible Area
Director do about it?
called it to her attention. No one did. Anyone in the room
who was following the Jabber feed (and I recognized several
people on the Meetecho participant list who where clearly there)
could have noticed either the absence of a designated scribe
(any time in over two hours) or the question (only one hour
before that was noticed and read) and brought it to the
attention of whomever was at the front of the room at the time.
One of the IETF's important features and big advantages over
other SDOs is that we claim to function as a community (not
just, e.g., a collection of representatives of companies) and
mostly succeed at that. But that makes these kinds of glitches
a community problem, not an IETF Chair, IESG, or, in the case of
WGs, a WG Chair problem. If someone notices and doesn't speak
up on the theory that it noticing is someone else's job, that is
a community failure. If a newcomer notices and speaks up, I
hope we can promise a round of applause (at least).
Anyone in the room who was on Jabber could have gone to the
microphone to relay the question. A community problem creates a
dispersion of responsibility with the effect that the problem gets ignored.
The question itself was about the current status of so-called
internationalization work in the IETF and, in particular, the
status of the recommendations from the BOF on processing that
work at IETF 102. I know at least some of the answer; my reason
for asking is that I wanted to get a reaction from the IESG
because internationalization issues are not confined to the ART
area much less whichever ART AD is currently holding the short
straw. Others may reasonably disagree but I think that, if we
are serious about attracting a diverse set of participants from
around the world, internationalization work is really important.
If we give it minimal attention, we are sending another kind of
message. Missing the window of the IESG part of the plenary
largely defeated the purpose of the question.
Internationalization work has the side effect of attracting a
different set of attendees to the IETF. The IETF will have to
determine whether it is willing to be open to other countries.
There is an aspect of the above (comment) which is relevant to the IAB.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1. In this case, the group is the plenary.
