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

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

>  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.

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.

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/
> 
> 
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