Adjustments to our work mode - please read

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Everyone,

A number of folks have commented over the years about how it can be difficult to follow this mailing list. This is especially the case for HTTP implementers who don't have the time to focus on such a high-volume channel.

I've been concerned about this for some time, since it can be seen as biasing participation towards "professional" standards people, and away from implementers and users. So, to see if we can improve matters for those folks without significantly disadvantaging current participants, I've been talking to our Area Director about experimenting with the group's working mode. 

To that end, we're going to try allowing discussion and resolution of issues in the issue tracker itself, rather than requiring discussion there to be moved here -- thereby allowing people to participate without subscribing to the mailing list, if they don't want to. 

For details, see:
  https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

This takes effect immediately for our current deliverables, whose issue list is here:
  https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues

If you want to track conversations there and have a Github account, you can click "watch" at the top of the patch to be notified of new comments, etc.

To make sure that those who don't wish to use the issue tracker aren't disadvantaged, we'll do a number of things, including:

- Summarise (with links) the design issues closed by each draft when it is announced on this list
- Allow issues to be re-opened when someone brings substantive new information (as always)
- Allow those who do not wish to use the issues list to comment on this mailing list
- Provide a separate, announce-only mailing list that is subscribed to every issue change, for those who do not want to use a github account to receive notifications. See: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/http-issues>

We'll review this approach on a continuing basis to make sure it's working.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/