Re: "community" for the RFC series

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

On 05/10/2019 22:39, Michael StJohns wrote:
> Hi Stephen - I hope I've gotten far enough back in this thread to make a
> sensible comment on the topic and sorry for the top post, but I couldn't
> figure where place to paste the various items.
> 
> My concern about the broader community is not so much characterizing or
> enumerating them, or binding them into our discussions on the RFC
> Series, but more about ensuring that our (IETF, IAB, IRTF, etc)
> parochial views of the RFC series as authors/users does not limit the
> usefulness of the series to that broader community (e.g. by doing what's
> important to us and only that, without considering what might be
> important to them). 

Fair point.

> As long as the RFC editor was somewhat independent,
> I was pretty sure that there would be resistance to imposing a narrower
> world view (e.g. to bring the RFC series more in line with what the IETF
> needs/wants/demands at the expense of somewhat undefined more global
> needs).
> 
> I think you've got a good grasp on the problem - and I like your
> discussion points with Christian below - I think they're on target.
> 
> one more point for thought:  A given document or book generally has a
> somewhat limited community of some sorts - authors, implementers,
> reviewers, teachers, students.  A library - by it's nature - has a much
> broader community, even if you might not be able to enumerate or
> characterize each one.   Maybe that's a better model for thinking of
> some parts of the RFC Editor model?

Yep, I tend to agree that the series has a value over and
above the set of individual RFCs. Not sure I'd be able to
describe that well myself though, but one to ponder.

Cheers,
S.


> 
> Later, Mike
> 
> On 10/4/2019 5:17 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>> Hiya,
>>
>> On 04/10/2019 19:21, Christian Huitema wrote:
>>> On 10/4/2019 2:31 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
>>>> On 04/10/2019 08:51, Christian Huitema wrote:
>>>>> I have heard Brian Carpenter's argument that if there is not an
>>>>> authorship community, there is a readership community. That leaves me
>>>>> skeptical. Clearly, authors and publishers should care about their
>>>>> readership, and I wish we had better ways to assess the impact of our
>>>>> publications. But passive readership does not create a community, no
>>>>> more than me reading ITU publications makes me part of the ITU
>>>>> community. What creates a community is engagement, contributions and
>>>>> sharing.
>>>> I guess I disagree with you there Christian - ISTM that
>>>> at the very least, people who read RFCs and write related
>>>> code that is part of many network stacks, but who do not
>>>> engage with the IETF or RFC editor at all, do deserve more
>>>> consideration than you imply. I can see arguments for a
>>>> bigger set of people deserving consideration but omitting
>>>> the above example set seems just broken to me.
>>>
>>> Sure,
>> As in: you agree that particular set of people do deserve
>> consideration in the upcoming discussion? If so, I think
>> that's correct.
>>
>> But, that implies we should also be thinking if there are
>> other sets of folks (adding up <<7.7 billion:-) who similarly
>> deserve consideration.
>>
>>> but if they don't somehow communicate, how do you know they are there?
>> For the set I mentioned? Do you really doubt they're there?
>> I do not.
>>
>>> And if they do communicate, the question is "with whom"?
>> I don't think that's a question we need address at all. That's
>> just their business.
>>
>>> Where do they
>>> send the message saying that they are trying to implement protocol FOO
>>> but they don't get what section 3.1.5 of RFC XXXX really means?
>>> Slashdot? Stack overflow? Some Reddit group?
>> Yes. stackexchange etc. mostly at present it seems. It'd
>> once have been things like Dr. Dobbs magazine and/or
>> comp.<various> via usenet I guess.
>>
>>> Actually, it would be very
>>> nice if the IETF had a documented feedback channel for such exchanges.
>>> That would be a nice way to grow the community.
>> We did discuss exactly that (a stackexchange <something>) at
>> the IAB retreat - not for IETF process-wonkery like this, but
>> for protocols that are widely used like HTTP. I think someone
>> there was gonna look into it but can't recall if anything's
>> been done since. I can totally such a channel working for HTTP
>> or maybe DNS, but I'd guess not for this discussion. Might be
>> worth a try regardless though, even if it didn't work for this
>> discussion, we'd learn HOWTO.
>>
>> I do however have a glib answer for how we could try communicate
>> with people who read some RFCs but who don't otherwise get at all
>> involved... we write an RFC. Maybe one describing the upcoming
>> discussion and try see if promoting that in various places gets
>> any feedback. So there may be a case for writing charter-like
>> text for the upcoming discussion in an RFC (I guess that'd be
>> an IAB-stream RFC if we did it).
>>
>> For other subsets of people, other mechanisms will I guess be
>> needed, hence me wondering if it'd be good to try characterise
>> better who might really be in that "bigger" community. We seem
>> to have identified at least one set of people already so maybe
>> it'll not be too hard to find more sets or agree we've found
>> enough.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> S.
>>
>>
>>
>>> -- Christian Huitema
>>>
>>>
> 
>