Re: Planned experiment: A new mailing list for last-call discussions

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Monday, September 16, 2019 16:32 +0200 Julian Reschke
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 16.09.2019 16:15, Barry Leiba wrote:
>> Hi, John,
>> 
>>> But, again, my concern is that we get the best cross-area
>>> reviews possible and reach IETF consensus on that basis, not
>>> that WG participation and consensus within the WG is
>>> unimportant.
>> 
>> Indeed, John, and I understand and agree with that.
>> 
>> I think the issue is that you (and a few others) are
>> concerned that if we move last-call discussion to another
>> list, fewer people will follow that list, and, therefore,
>> fewer people will be exposed to the last-call discussions and
>> possibly be moved to join some of them.
>> 
>> On the other hand, others, including the people who suggested
>> the split in the first place, think that actually *more*
>> people will be likely to pay attention to the last-call
>> discussion if they're on a mailing list that's separate from
>> the high-volume that is the IETF Discussion list.
>> 
>> As these are both valid views and we don't know which is
>> correct, it seems to me that the only way to find out what
>> will *actually* happen will be to run the experiment.  Do you
>> know another way?
> 
> Good points.
> 
> I wonder whether we actually should dedicate the new list to
> *anything* that is about IETF consensus, not only last calls
> (so the idea would be: "important things go here").

This is a serious question despite the way I'm about to ask it,
but, if we successfully did a split on that basis, wouldn't that
leave us an "IEFF Last Call" list and an "IETF Noise and
Whining" list?   It also suggests something else: would it make
sense to do a three-way split:

 * IETF Last Calls on technical specifications (including
	technical A/S documents)
	
 * IETF Last Calls on procedural specifications (as
	recent examples, that would include all of the
	anti-harassment documents, all of the IASA2 work, and
	any documents that arise out of the recent discussions
	about recalls and recall eligibility)
	
 * Everything else 

At present, I'm agnostic about which of those categories IETF
Last Calls and other requests for input that fall into neither
of the first two categories, including statements about what the
IETF believes about various topics, proposed IESG statements,
and discussion of IAB proposed statements that expand only IETF
lists, would go, but that may need clarification even if we stay
with a two-way split.

best,
   john