--On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 12:54 -0600 Spencer Dawkins at IETF <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > So, my point is that there are mailing lists that are having > discussions of interest to the community, that it's not easy > to for the community to find out about. And now, I might have > told you about one more! > > It happens that I'm subscribing to mailing lists at a couple > of other SDOs. One has a "here's a list of all the mailing > lists you can subscribe to" page, and the other one ... > doesn't. Noting that we have two lists that, combined, are all the mailing lists one can subscribe to, it is clear (at least to me) that, as we split historically-combined lists, we need to do more than that. Mixing, as https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/nonwg does, an RFP announcement list in with the "non-WG lists" collection (a mixture of lists from closed WGs, lists proposing work, meeting-specific lists, assorted IAB and IRTF lists, now assorted "ag" lists, several lists that probably belonged to the IAOC and that don't appear to have been moved over, some lists that were created because someone (possibly a frequent disrupter) asked for them and some AD gave in, a few lists that are horribly outdated, and so on. If one happens to know the name of a particular list, that list may provide pointers to information. Or it may not: there are many lists for which the "Description" is missing from that page, the page does not distinguish among categories of lists (not even the ex-WG ones are consistently identified in descriptions), and a large fraction of the lists have "About" sections on their web pages that are essentially information-free. Adding another complication, some are open, some aren't and there is rarely any way to distinguish from that page. I also found several dead links as I sampled my way through that page today. So, Jay, let me suggest a project for you or someone you recruit. Go through that "non-WG mailing lists" page and see if it is possible to index it in compact and accessible form, perhaps following the model of https://www.ietf.org/links/. In the process, see if you can identify lists, including the several meeting planning ones, that should "belong to" the IETF Administrative LLC and/or you as ExecDir, think about doing a little winnowing if appropriate and clean up the descriptions for the rest. Think about putting an "IETF Administration LLC" entry on that links page and listing LLC-related lists, including those meeting ones, the RFP one, etc., under it. In the process, you might want to split "hopelessly outdated and of interest only to historians" lists off from the main body of the non-WG list and put them into a nice place of their own (for example, I doubt anyone is likely, in their normal course of IETF work, to consult "101all", which is probably good because the other list of lists (https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo ) claims there is no such list). At least that should help clarify the problem of "maybe there is a list for that, now how do I find it"). Our historical tendency to use names for lists and WGs that are stronger on cuteness than information obviously does not help. >> > And so on. I don't know the answers to any of those >> > questions, but would hope that you (and we) would think >> > about them. >> >> Will do. I suspect the way forward requires a dose of >> creativity. > > And communication! Darn it ... Indeed.... to both communication and creativity. > Do the right thing, of course. Of course. best, john
