Hi Keith, On Sun, Feb 16, 2020 at 07:29:43AM -0500, Keith Moore 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 agree that MUA trends are not helping, especially with the preponderance of using (e.g.) color to indicate quoting vs. reply. I specifically note that the official IETF mailarchive uses only the text/plain component, which of course does not provide color information, making the web view of the archive effectively useless in many cases. > 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. Please report such cases to the relevant authority(ies) (responsible AD, possibly ombudsteam, etc.). Thanks, Ben
