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

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

Brian

> On 18/08/2020, at 2:46 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> 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.

I am in the process of determining data like this for a number of reasons and so I can give you some interim results now.  

First the disclaimer:

* I’m relying on mailman storing email addresses consistently and I have not completely checked that it does
* I am counting address with different +box notation as a single subscriber
* Addresses that have been disabled by bounce processing are counted the same as those that are not (one of the main reasons these are only interim results)
* This data is from three weeks ago and will have changed since then

With that in mind, the interim results are:

1. The membership of ietf@ was 1796 distinct subscribers 


2. There were 55,894 distinct email addresses subscribed to mailing lists that allow open subscription

3. 123 subscribers to ietf@ did not subscribe to any other list

> 
> 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.

4. Three weeks ago the membership of ietf-announce was 3038

5. 800 were subscribed to ietf-announce@ and no other list

6. 1087 were subscribed to ietf@ but not ietf-announce@

Jay

> 
> 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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>> [e-mail]
>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce
>> Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
>> or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>> 
> 

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]