Keith, This is a note I would normally probably send privately, but I hope it will be helpful to others. Inline. --On Wednesday, September 4, 2019 15:22 -0400 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John, > > I respect your efforts, and those of Kathleen and others, to > mentor new people. I wouldn't mind helping myself, but new > people are generally not visible to me unless I attend > meetings, which is problematic both for reasons of expense and > reasons of stress. The thought of spending thousands of > dollars to participate in what has often become an extremely > dysfunctional discussion environment (though this does vary > from one WG to another), and endure more abuse in the process, > is just too depressing. But if there were some other way > to connect new people to remote participants, that might be > helpful, and that's why I asked about other efforts. First of all, I've been attending, on average, one meeting a year or less for that last several years. That may be more than you are getting too, but probably not a lot more. So, the place where I'm seeing those newcomers is that I track several mailing lists including, but not limited to, the IETF one (as, I assume, do you -- and there is probably some overlap between the lists I follow and those that you do). What I've found in the last 30 or so years with the IETF is that the point at which newcomers most need assistance is whether they start posting about things they consider substantive and relevant on mailing lists. The newcomers who show up at meetings before reading and maybe posting to mailing list are not hopeless, but the ones who are likely to bring value to the IETF do, as a consequence of how we work, show up on the mailing lists, whether before their first f2f meeting or after it. That is the point at which I have been reaching out, so whether I attend meetings is more or less irrelevant (although, if I do attend a meeting and find someone wandering around looking lost, I am likely to offer directions or other hand). I wish I thought that asking the IESG, or even whatever the EDU team is called now, to come up with new ideas and procedures in this area would be helpful, but history suggests otherwise. If you come up with ideas and push them, I'm more optimistic (but, FWIW, I've been pushing for inclusion of not-at-the-f2f-meetings mentors/guides, whether for in-meetings newcomers or those who are also remote, for years with very little practical traction). So I do my thing, Kathleen does her thing, and I invite you and anyone else with the right concerns and background to join us by doing yours. > And I respect your right, and others' rights, to make > individual judgments and choices about how to best further > IETF's mission. If you choose to do work more > behind-the-scenes I wish you well in your efforts. We > certainly need lots of help of various kinds. Meanwhile it's > increasingly clear that some IETF leaders' actions (promoting > censorship for arbitrary reasons and also overtly promoting > discrimination) are having a chilling effect on IETF's ability > to do sound technical work, and exacerbate the very toxicity > that some leaders claim to be trying to remedy. I have > seen no sign that these efforts have been curtailed. Until > they are curtailed, I believe it will continue to be necessary > to call them out. But I remain hopeful that the problems > will be addressed. And I will also continue to try to > recognize positive developments that come to my attention. As you or others may have deduced from comments I've made on other threads, I have started wondering whether the IETF is beginning to suffer from some age-related degenerative disease or whether our fundamental models for getting things done are appropriate for a rapidly-developing Internet in which most of the protocols and technology are new but not so well suited to a more mature Internet with more mature technologies and protocols. If that were really the case, then several of the things you comment on above (and interpret the way you do) are just symptoms and, even if they could be fixed, doing so would amount to playing whack-a-mole with other symptoms. Now, if and when I become convinced of that, I will presumably stop putting effort into newcomers, protocol and procedural development efforts in the IETF, and so on, so you can assume I have not quite degenerated into terminal pessimism. Yet. >From that standpoint, your paragraph immediately above disturbs me, not necessarily because I disagree with your description of the problems (I agree with some, but not all, of it) but because you seem to be writing in a passive, wait for something to happen, style, e.g., "until they are curtailed" and "will be addressed". You've been around for a long time and know how things work. You've been a document author, IIR a WG Chair, and an AD. You've had good ideas about how to fix problems in the past and, I assume, still do. Do what we've both told newcomers to do over the years, e.g., "don't just complain on a list, write up a proposal in I-D form so that a serious and focused discussion can occur". If there are multiple drafts around that address issues for which there is consensus in the community that they really are problems, maybe it is time to use the option in REFC 2026 that we've never used: an appeal to the ISOC BoT on the grounds that the procedures (and the IESG interpretation of them) are inconsistent with fairness. If you want to, you know how to do that too. If none of that appeals, perhaps you might be figuring out how to convince the Nomcom to change things. Or perhaps you should put your name forward for, e.g., the IAB and convince the Nomcom that you could do that job effectively without attending meetings and that anyone who claims that a large travel budget is necessary for effective participation is part of the problem and should not be in the leadership. If you think you are being abused (not just disagreed with), I hope you have tried the ombudsteam. No process is perfect, but that one has been, in my experience, quite good. One thing I'm fairly sure of is that, if those of us who have a lot of experience simply sit around, describing problems, bemoaning our fate, and waiting for someone else to make things happen, the odds of significant improvement are low. > You mentioned remembering when I first came to IETF. What > I remember about my first meeting (St. Louis) is being > pleasantly surprised, even shocked, at how eager the > participants were to have a new and well-informed participant, > and how welcome my input was in the discussions that we had > that week. It was a complete contrast to today's > environment of general hostility. Of course conditions are > different now, but so is the organization. > I think the biggest problem we have is that we've lost the > sense of collaborating for a common purpose. I don't see > how we can restore that as long as the leadership promotes > divisiveness. I hesitate to suggest that there may be some international trends of that sort because it would really sadden me if our leadership had become part of those trends. But, again, some of those things --including the differences you believe you see (not disagreeing, just trying to not comment) -- are part of the reason for the organizational degenerative disease hypothesis. If we believe that such a disease has set in and become irreversible, than the one really constructive discussion is where work should be steered while there is still a choice. best, john
