Re: I-D Action: draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00.txt

[tom petch <[e-mail]>]

On 18/08/2020 04:10, Jay Daley wrote:
> Brian
>
>> On 18/08/2020, at 2:46 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> This document updates RFC3005, the charter of the IETF discussion
>>>    list.
>>
>> Then its intended status needs to be BCP.
>>
>>>    Comparing its membership to a sample of other IETF mailing lists, we
>>>    find that there are typically many members that are not taking part
>>>    on the IETF discussion list:
>>
>> People specialise. The intersection count given (628) is therefore not a
>> useful statistic. The intersection with the union of all WG mailing lists
>> would be useful. But for now, we simply do not know how many subscribers
>> to at least one WG are missing from the ietf list, and we do not know how
>> many subscribers to ietf are subscribed to no WG list. Those numbers could
>> be discovered, of course.
>
> I am in the process of determining data like this for a number of reasons and so I can give you some interim results now.
>
> First the disclaimer:
>
> * I’m relying on mailman storing email addresses consistently and I have not completely checked that it does
> * I am counting address with different +box notation as a single subscriber
> * Addresses that have been disabled by bounce processing are counted the same as those that are not (one of the main reasons these are only interim results)
> * This data is from three weeks ago and will have changed since then
>
> With that in mind, the interim results are:
>
> 1. The membership of ietf@ was 1796 distinct subscribers
>
> 2. There were 55,894 distinct email addresses subscribed to mailing lists that allow open subscription
>
> 3. 123 subscribers to ietf@ did not subscribe to any other list
>
>>
>> If I had to guess, I'd use ietf-announce as a proxy for active participation,
>> and that would suggest that at (most) 1799/3037 = 59% of active participants
>> were on the ietf list at the end of July. That imperfect measurement is a
>> good deal higher than the estimates in the draft.
>
> 4. Three weeks ago the membership of ietf-announce was 3038
>
> 5. 800 were subscribed to ietf-announce@ and no other list
>
> 6. 1087 were subscribed to ietf@ but not ietf-announce@

Jay

Another wrinkle, that may or may not be significant, is the use of 
multiple addresses to subscribe to different lists, as I do; that is, 
totally different addresses that would appear to have nothing in common 
unless you can divine the semantics behind the choice of address.  In 
particular, the address I use here is not the one I use for i-d-announce 
nor is it the one I use for the WG in which I am most active so that 
when I come back from time out, I can prioritise what I see.  I use a 
different display name for each, not so that people like you cannot 
correlate my activity(:-) but as a reminder to myself where something 
came from.

Tom Petch







>
> Jay
>
>>
>> As I said earlier, there is evidence that only a small fraction (10%?) of
>> the ietf list is interested enough in policy/process/admin to subscribe to
>> lists on those topics. So using my imperfect measurement above, we find that
>> at a generous estimate, 6% of IETF participants care about policy/process/admin.
>>
>>>   2.  The IESG should not consider the IETF discussion list as an
>>>        appropriate venue for notifying IETF participants of its actions
>>>        or items under consideration.
>>
>> That's not new. The formal channel has been ietf-announce (which is not a
>> discussion list) for 20+ years. True, the IESG sometimes puts the ietf list
>> in Cc:, but since ietf-announce is not a discussion list, that's a natural
>> thing to do. Thus:
>>
>>>   More suitable channels include the
>>>        IETF Announcements list and the GENDISPATCH Working Group,
>>>        depending on the notification.
>>
>> is standard operating procedure.
>>
>>>
>>>    3.  The IESG should not consider the IETF discussion list as
>>>        representative of the broader IETF community.
>>
>> Then where can the IESG go for that? (Of course, when something reaches
>> a formal Last Call, we know the answer, but that is the very last stage
>> in discussing a topic).
>>
>>>    4.  IETF participants who wish to make proposals about or discuss the
>>>        IETF's direction, policy, meetings and procedures should do so in
>>>        GENDISPATCH or other Working Group, if one more specific to that
>>>        topic should exist.
>>
>> Here's where it gets tricky. That is indeed what should happen as a
>> proposal crystallizes. But is the draft really saying that the plenary
>> discussion list shouldn't be used for the early rounds of discussion of
>> an IETF-wide topic? That such topics should be discussed *from the start
>> to finish* by the self-selected 6% or fewer of participants who are process
>> wonks? That the rest of the IETF will only hear about it when a Last Call
>> comes out?
>>
>> That sounds like mushroom management to me.
>>
>>>    5.  IETF participants who wish to make proposals about or discuss
>>>        technical issues should do so in the most appropriate Working
>>>        Group or Area mailing list to the topic
>>
>> That's mainly what people do. Just occasionally somebody (usually not
>> a regular participant) sends a technical query to the ietf list, and
>> usually gets politely redirected. I think it's great when that happens.
>>
>>
>>>    7.  There should be no explicit or implicit requirement for IETF
>>>        leadership or any other person to be subscribed to the IETF
>>>        discussion list.
>>
>> I absolutely utterly violently disagree. I must confess that the day
>> I stepped down from the IAB, I dropped the ietf list, but after a year
>> or so I realised that just wasn't viable unless I only wanted to work
>> in my own tiny corner of the protocol stack, and I rejoined. (There is
>> a handy delete button in my MUA, which I have always used very freely on
>> [e-mail] threads.)
>>
>> It isn't acceptable to me that IAB or IESG members would *not* keep an
>> eye on the list.
>>
>> In summary, I think the proposed changes would change the list from
>> being mainly useful but sometimes toxic, to being mainly toxic and rarely
>> useful.
>>
>> Regards
>>    Brian Carpenter
>>
>> On 17-Aug-20 13:00, [e-mail] wrote:
>>>
>>> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
>>>
>>>
>>>         Title           : Rechartering the IETF Discussion List
>>>         Author          : Mark Nottingham
>>> 	Filename        : draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00.txt
>>> 	Pages           : 7
>>> 	Date            : 2020-08-16
>>>
>>> Abstract:
>>>    This document updates RFC3005, the charter of the IETF discussion
>>>    list.
>>>
>>>
>>> The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter/
>>>
>>> There are also htmlized versions available at:
>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-nottingham-discussion-recharter-00
>>>
>>>
>>> Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
>>> until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
>>>
>>> Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
>>> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> I-D-Announce mailing list
>>> [e-mail]
>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce
>>> Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
>>> or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>>>
>>
>