Re: [Gendispatch] Ending [e-mail]

["Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Rob,

Looking at (and directly quoting from) RFC 3005, I think that it makes sense to split ietf@ into separate focussed lists.

We already have:
“last-call@” for “Last Call discussions of proposed protocol actions”
“ietf-announce”, for “Announcements of conferences, events, or activities that are sponsored or endorsed by the Internet Society or IETF.”

In addition to this, I think that we could/should have four more aliases:

  1.  “ietf-technical@” for “It furthers the development and specification of Internet technology through discussion of technical issues.” and “Discussion of technical issues that are candidates for IETF work,
      but do not yet have an appropriate e-mail venue”

  1.  “ietf-meetings@” for “Questions and clarifications concerning IETF meetings”.  It probably should automatically receive emails from the meeting specific lists
  2.  “ietf-policy@” for “It also hosts discussions of IETF direction, policy, and procedures. ” and “Discussion of IETF administrative policies”
  3.  “ietf-discuss@” for “General discussion related to the IETF, considerable latitude is allowed”

This could mean that “ietf@” should not exist, or perhaps it could be a non-postable alias for a subset of the lists above, e.g., perhaps ietf-announce + last-call + ietf-technical + ietf-meetings.

This might allow the IETF community to better tune into which lists/topics they would like to subscribe to.  I.e., if somebody is only interested in IETF because they want to progress technical standards then they can hopefully avoid some of the verbose non-technical threads whilst still be able to participate in constructive cross area technical discussions.

Regards,
Rob


From: Gendispatch <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Rob Sayre
Sent: 03 April 2021 03:21
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [Gendispatch] Ending [e-mail]

Hi,

I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>.

At this point, there are many other lists to discuss general IETF issues (last-call@, arch@, gendispatch@, etc). So, the original catch-all purpose of the IETF list is well-handled in many, if not all, cases.

What's left on the general IETF list seems to consist of general societal or language issues that the IETF is not well-suited to address. Additionally, some participants seem to be taking advantage of its large audience and the list's IETF affiliation. Many of the posts seem better suited to blog posts, email newsletters, forum posts, other venues where the readers have opted in to such content.

I don't want to spend time on this document if I'm going to get flamed into outer space without getting it published, but I think it's time.

thanks,
Rob