Re: So where have all these new 6man WG people come from?

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On May 29, 2020, at 10:17 AM, Stewart Bryant <[e-mail]> wrote:
> My main point was that a list discussion of this type rarely reaches an acceptable outcome, and that an objective discussion at IETF is normally a better approach. Indeed resolving issues like this is exactly why we meet F2F at IETF.

My experience with this is more that working group chairs are quite active in moderating discussions during in-person meetings, and really tend not to take responsibility for doing that on the mailing list. This produces the effect you’ve observed, that it’s easier to get consensus in-person than on the list.

This is unfortunate; if the chairs took a more active role on the list, considering the cost of the time it takes for participants with coding jobs to follow multi-hundred-post repetitive arguments, we would probably do a better job of reaching consensus on-list.

Of course, this is a lot of work, and it’s sort of understandable that it doesn’t happen; my point is simply that if we want to be an effective _online_ organization, maybe we need to start doing things a bit differently.