Re: Question about pre-meeting document posting deadlines for the IESG and the community

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 3/23/24 12:29, Pete Resnick wrote:

>     A decision made a day before a meeting doesn't allow enough time
>     to see whether there would be complaints.
>
> Completely agree with Keith that making these decisions at the last 
> minute is not acceptable.
>
While I do agree with that, my point was that decisions have to be made 
on mailing lists.  It takes a few days before everyone on the list has 
had a chance to read a proposal and the associated discussion, express 
their opinions (or choose not to do so) and for that discussion to 
settle down.    And some people are likely away from their email for a 
day or three.   A week is much closer than a day, as a minimum time 
required to take a decision.
>
> But where I disagree with John is with the notion that these 
> artificial rules and procedures address the issue in any meaningful way.
>
I won't make broad generalizations about "artificial rules and 
procedures" (what's artificial, anyway?) but I thought the two-week 
deadline on postings before a meeting was a good compromise, easy to 
remember, with a valuable consistency across all working groups, and it 
served us well.   IMO there's far too much variation between different 
working groups these days, such that you now have to learn about the 
culture of any specific WG that the way that particular WG's chair(s) 
want to run things, in order to participate effectively.   And that, 
IMO, does even more harm to IETF, which is already too hostile to 
"outsiders" and generalists.

Keith