Re: [admin-discuss] Attempt to diagram the structure of the IETF

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 23-Feb-22 13:08, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> 
> 
> On 22/02/2022 22:36, Jay Daley wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps this could be made clearer still by replacing the word
>> community here with "Volunteer participant" in the key and possibly
>> the title?
> Something like that could be good, yes. But I realise that
> there's no way to make such a diagram perfect.
This is a bit of a tangent, but for newcomers to the IETF, whether as
participants or as contractors, the "volunteer" ethos, the "no voting"
rule and the strong dependency on informal channels add up to a major
source of confusion. I don't think that this diagram, which naturally
focuses on well-defined roles and communication channels, can be expected
to help with that confusion.

Probably the Tao and other material aimed at newcomers would help a bit,
but perhaps we need some text explicitly describing the volunteer ethos,
and how community input ultimately determines not only technical outcomes,
but actually *everything* on the diagram.

    Brian