--On Friday, May 17, 2019 09:38 +0000 Mark Nottingham <mnot@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > .... but it works horribly when there's any controversy or > disagreement about scope. For example, the ATOMPUB WG was > probably the worst experience I've ever had in a standards > body, and in my opinion it's largely because the group never > met face-to-face (except for a single pre-chartering meeting). > This was sold as enabling small developers to participated, > but what it ended up being was a mess, because people had > little shared context and no established trust. But Mark, I've never seen any WG work well if there is controversy or disagreement about scope, and more f2f meetings -- at IETF or otherwise-- typically turn into more debates about scope and objectives. So, yes, launching such WGs is probably a bad idea but it is not clear that how many f2f meetings they hold (again, at IETF or elsewhere) makes much difference. There is an advantage for those without clear scope statements, which is that open, f2f meetings with a wide range of perspectives represented often converge faster -- whether on a solution on on a conclusion that solutions are not going to be forthcoming -- than mailing lists. That is true whether the needed solutions are agreement about scope or a technical topic. This threat is symptomatic of part of the advantage of such meetings over a mailing list discussion for at least some types of controversies: it is hard to believe that, in a f2f meeting, people would be coming to the microphone to repeat each other as many times as we have seen duplicative answers to Aaron's question. In that sense, thanks for saying something different :-( john
