Re: [Gendispatch] Updating the IETF Discussion List Charter (was: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-eggert-bcp45bis-02.txt)

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

Taken together:

On 25.06.22 23:53, Rob Sayre wrote:
>
>
> Adding an "off-topic", "discussion", or "random" communication channel 
> is a very common thing to do in online communities.

Maybe so, but that is not what I would suggest we have as a plenary 
function.  This organization has a mission, and like any other sane 
organization, anything outside of that mission is not for a plenary 
meeting.  We can have other lists for random/off topic discussion, if we 
must.


> The list with the most general charter does not have to have the 
> widest latitude.

Yes.  In fact quite the opposite.  The utmost discretion and care should 
be give to it.

As Mark put it:

> 1) A well-defined purpose and scope for the plenary function (which implies that what it is*not*  is also defined), and
> 2) A well-thought-out moderation function that's broadly seen as legitimate.

Although I might add that I have pondered the word "facilitation" from 
time to time.  And I have even pondered two words, “professional 
facilitation”, from time to time.

What are the greatest problems we are facing today as a community?

>
> Arguments like "stop trying to kill the IETF's sense of community" 
> aren't called for. Just way over the top, to be honest.

Before you say that, let's turn this around. What evidence do you have 
that such a community continues to exist?


>
>     If what you mean in by dissecting and reconstructing is the
>     splitting of
>     lists and removal of plenary power from the IETF list, then I
>     agree that
>     we have fragmented that function in a way that has harmed the
>     organization's community identity and, I believe, the Internet
>     architecture. 
>
>
> What is the evidence for this harm?

Try this as an exercise: name the top three activities going on in each 
area.  If you can't do that, that's the harm.  If you do not understand 
how they might relate to the Internet, that's even more harm because 
we're the ones who are supposed to understand that.

Furthermore, apart from security, our organization is against the 
Internet layering model that dates back to our earliest days.  But most 
people don't think like that in today's world: they think in terms of 
the problems they are trying to solve at a systems engineering level, 
trying to put it all together.  With the DISPATCH model, things have, 
from time to time, gotten dropped, NOT because people don't want to work 
on them, but because of how we are organized.

A plenary function serves as a means for people to raise those aspects 
for discussion and “dispatch” (lower case).

Beyond that, this organization has used that plenary function – 
sometimes in a way that we wouldn't have liked – to express and discuss 
serious concerns.  In the last few years this has happened at least 
three times:

 1. What to do about Snowdonia, where the community decided both on list
    and off to establish a policy around pervasive surveillance.
 2. The RFC Editor's resignation, leading to an IAB program and four
    drafts that are about to become version 3 of the RFC model.
 3. COVID and what to do about it, in terms of how it impacts our community.

Without that plenary function, where would these matters have been 
discussed?  All three of these points impacted the entirety of the 
organization.  I will add a fourth that neither I nor Daniel Migault nor 
Jay nor others have lost sight of: our organization's impact on the 
environment.  That one is festering.

There are others.  How we as an organization handle privacy and other 
values is horizontal, as we've seen.  Those discussions continue, 
although I challenge you to find them.

That DOESN'T mean, again, that people should prattle on in plenary.  It 
does mean that we should be informed because finding some of this stuff 
in last call doesn't typically allow for revisiting of the work.


>
>     Plenary is needed not only for that identity but so that
>     the left hand (or however many hands we have) knows what the right
>     hand
>     is doing.
>
>     But that doesn't mean that there should be  a free-for-all on a
>     mailing
>     list.  Endless bickering about the same old subjects is not helpful.
>     Debating points not within the power of the IETF is
>     counter-productive.
>
>
> Well, when I wrote that IETF@ was "outward-facing", what I meant was 
> that newcomers encounter it and it does happen to represent the 
> organization by dint of its name.

I hear you about the name.  We have created this "misleading" 
situation.  Keep in mind what JFK said:

/Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man./

(Forgive the use of the masculine; it is a quote and Kennedy might well 
have used the term "people" today.)

Eliot