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
