Weekly posting summary for ietf@ietf.org

Hi,

I strongly encourage the collection of data for understanding mailing list behaviors. However, I have concerns that this information could be interpreted to support specific positions about the benefit or lack thereof associated with mailing list behaviors. There has been no work to develop a reasonable model of mailing list behaviors and the benefits of certain patterns, so making unwarranted assumtions based on these statistics could easily lead to abuse.

I suggest designing an experiment, ala RFC3933, to collect statistical mailing list information for purposes of better understanding how certain patterns positively or negatively impact effectiveness. This collection should be done across a wide variety of mailing lists, e.g., all IETF mailing lists, to ensure an adequately diverse sample universe. Once collected, the data should be correlated to other statistics that are related to WG effectiveness, and be corrrelated to subjective analysis of the effectiveness of a WG. 

This data could then be used to design a better process for identifying and handling mailing list behaviors that might be considered abusive. I do not like adding lots of process; I would rather see us focus on developing technology, but if we need to have process, then let's at least design processes based on the best objective data we can gather.

Some of the analysisI think should be done:
1) is there a correlation between the posting patterns and the timely completion of milestones in a WG?
2) is there a correlation between posting patterns and the time between first publication of an I-D and its subsequent adoption by the WG? 
3) is there a correlation between posting patterns and the time between adoption of an I-D by the WG and the publication as a Proposed Standard?
4) Are there specific points in the provess when the posting pattern behaviors change? (such as after PS apporoval but before RFC publication, or during WGLC, or immediately after and updated I-D is posted?, etc.
5) in the subjective view of the chairs **of many WGs, not just ones that had problem posters**, did posting behaviors help or hurt the forward progress of the WG?
6) maybe a survey should be done for all WG participants to get their subjective view of whether posting behaviors helped or hurt WG process

I would be willing to help design and document a data collection experiment to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that impact the effectiveness of IETF processes.

David Harrington
dharrington@huawei.com

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