Re: "community" for the RFC series

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

On 06/10/2019 04:58, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 06-Oct-19 13:34, Christian Huitema wrote:
>> On 10/5/2019 3:37 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>
>>> One quick addendum: researchers and educators. I know people
>>> personally who cite RFCs for research & teaching purposes, but
>>> don't participate at all in I*TF activities.
>>
>>
>> Yes, but again I struggle with the distinction between readership and
>> community.

I think Christian's right that the level of what one might
call "community engagement" varies a lot between these various
sets of RFC readers. With e.g. the NRENs and RIRs and small
bits of ICANN say, there are fairly clear interactions and
feedback loops. I think the same could be said for some s/w
developers directly implementing from RFCs.

When one gets to Government regulators I think I'd have to
side with Christian that it'd be odd to describe them as
part of the same community as the IETF. I'm sure that they'd
find it equally odd as well if someone told a regulator that
they were part of a community including the entities they
(may or may not) regulate.

>> Would you say that an anthropologist reading the literature
>> of a foreign culture becomes part of the community for that culture? I
>> perceive these educators that you describe in much the same way, as
>> getting the production of a foreign body and studying them. I would only
>> feel a notion of "community" if they start engaging and trying to affect
>> the publication.
> 
> This is indeed where we may differ. I think that in setting up the
> arrangements for stewardship of the series, we should consider all the ways
> RFCs are used. That doesn't mean we expect input from the professors at
> the University of Northern Elbonia, but I think we should nevertheless
> consider the whole audience. Whether this has any major impact on the
> future governance mechanisms is another matter, of course.

So maybe the people engaged in the future RFC series editor
discussions should:

a) identify sets of people like those discussed here where we
want to explicitly consider whether changes being discussed may
have noteworthy effects (good or bad), and
b) make some effort to try communicate with and get feedback
from each of those sets of people, and,
c) even if we don't succeed at (b) we should make our best
guess as to what they might think.

And then weigh all that alongside trying to figure out if
there's rough consensus within the IETF for whatever changes
look sensible.

To me, that sounds doable (if a bit tedious:-)

Cheers,
S.





> 
>    Brian
> 
>