QUIC has a serious problem - far more people with an interest in the work than there is inter-personal bandwidth to process. I am staying out of that work because there are too many cooks already.
That problem does not have a simple solution. I don't think email can cope. And there is clearly more material to process than two sessions at an IETF three times a year can support.
The HTML work faced the same problem and they didn't come to a more satisfactory solution.
If I want to design something and arrive at the best design, I do not invite a hundred people to the design meeting. I design in a small group and then put out a proposal that others can use as the basis for discussion. Design by committee doesn't work. Refinement by committee can though.
It does often take a hundred stakeholders to get the necessary buy in for deployment.
On Sun, Feb 16, 2020 at 7:30 AM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2/16/20 2:37 AM, Roni Even (A) wrote:
> My personal experience when trying to attend a QUIC WG Interim meeting in Japan was very bad.
Not to single out QUIC, but I've formed the opinion that some WGs are
making excessive use of interim meetings (whether face-to-face or
virtual) in preference to email. Part of the purpose of using email
for discussion (and insisting that consensus be reached over email) was
to permit effective participation from anywhere, and thus, to encourage
diversity among participants. We recognize that occasional
face-to-face meetings are very helpful, but interim face-to-face
meetings thwart this long-established effort to encourage diversity.
Even virtual interim meetings have this effect due to the difficult of
participating from very remote time zones.
(Sure you have to deal with jet lag if you physically travel. But it's
easier to deal with jet lag if you actually travel to the location
because you are surrounded by people and services that reinforce the
local time zone.)
I will freely admit that it has become more difficult over time to have
effective discussions over email. Part of the problem seems to be that
so many people read email from mobile devices with small screens.
Perhaps for this reason, it seems that email readers today often have
short attention spans. Another part of the problem seems to be that
modern email user agents (including webmail user agents) are actually
less effective at facilitating discussion of deep technical subjects
than was the case 20 years ago. In particular the reply style of
quoting the subject message in the reply, with comments interspersed,
which was once very effective at least for a few replies, seems to be
discouraged by modern email user agents.
I don't claim to know what the best answer is but I am concerned that
IETF is losing its center. The fundamental means of participation in
IETF used to be email. Interim meetings have always been somewhat
problematic if not used sparingly. I've certainly seen them used as
part of a deliberate effort to reduce diversity of participation.
Keith
