Re: Excessive use of interim meetings

[Mark Andrews <[e-mail]>]

You can add to that MUA’s that want to play with font sizes when sending.
PHB’s reply to Keith’s email starts with the font size being set to “smaLL”.
The quoted reply is at default font size.

<div dir=3D"ltr"><div class=3D"gmail_default" style=3D"font-size:small">QUI=
C has a serious problem - far more people with an interest in the work than=
 there is inter-personal bandwidth to process. I am staying out of that wor=
k because there are too many cooks already.</div><div class=3D"gmail_defaul=
t" style=3D"font-size:small"><br></div><div class=3D"gmail_default" style=

<div class=3D"gmail_default" style=3D"font-size:small"><br></div></div><br>=
<div class=3D"gmail_quote"><div dir=3D"ltr" class=3D"gmail_attr">On Sun, Fe=

This is not to pick on PHB.  This appears to be a problem with Google’s
tools as others also send like this.  There really is NO REASON for the
sender to be setting font sizes in email, especially on the main reply.
PHB’s email becomes unreadable on a smart phone as the font becomes TOO SMALL.
A lot of us here have ageing eyes.  

Mark

> On 16 Feb 2020, at 23:29, Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On 2/16/20 2:37 AM, Roni Even (A) wrote:
> 
>> My personal experience when trying to attend a QUIC WG Interim meeting in Japan was very bad.
> 
> Not to single out QUIC, but I've formed the opinion that some WGs are making excessive use of interim meetings (whether face-to-face or virtual) in preference to email.   Part of the purpose of using email for discussion (and insisting that consensus be reached over email) was to permit effective participation from anywhere, and thus, to encourage diversity among participants.   We recognize that occasional face-to-face meetings are very helpful, but interim face-to-face meetings thwart this long-established effort to encourage diversity.   Even virtual interim meetings have this effect due to the difficult of participating from very remote time zones.
> 
> (Sure you have to deal with jet lag if you physically travel. But it's easier to deal with jet lag if you actually travel to the location because you are surrounded by people and services that reinforce the local time zone.)
> 
> I will freely admit that it has become more difficult over time to have effective discussions over email.   Part of the problem seems to be that so many people read email from mobile devices with small screens.   Perhaps for this reason, it seems that email readers today often have short attention spans.   Another part of the problem seems to be that modern email user agents (including webmail user agents) are actually less effective at facilitating discussion of deep technical subjects than was the case 20 years ago.   In particular the reply style of quoting the subject message in the reply, with comments interspersed, which was once very effective at least for a few replies, seems to be discouraged by modern email user agents.
> 
> I don't claim to know what the best answer is but I am concerned that IETF is losing its center.   The fundamental means of participation in IETF used to be email.   Interim meetings have always been somewhat problematic if not used sparingly.  I've certainly seen them used as part of a deliberate effort to reduce diversity of participation.
> 
> Keith
> 
> 

-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
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