Re: [Rfcplusplus] Conversation as metaphor

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 2:14 PM, Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> wrote:

> As to voices, one of the perhaps lost aspects of RFCs is that Jon always
> encouraged dissenting views on important topics to be published, so long as
> they were well reasoned and reasonably well written.  Personally I'd like
> to see more dissenting views coming out of independent submissions.  I know
> I have quite a few to share ;-)  I offer that only in as much as having a
> few dissenting views might make clear that we really do speak with multiple
> voices.
>
I personally don't think the dissenting opinions are fewer now, but fewer
of them are expressed in RFCs.  The critiques and dissents come, as Eric
mentioned, in other series or other forms.

Anyway, I won't be in Montreal, so here's my own bottom line:  if the IAB
> are serious about actually using different labels, ask yourselves what the
> plan is to make those new series successful.  How will the new series be
> promoted?  What will you attract readership?  And what will the rules of
> the road be for the series?  If you do not have a plan, then let's not be
> under any illusions that the new series will be successful.
>
> I think you're quite right that making a successful change of this type
will take work, and that promoting the output of the different streams will
be part of that work.  What's been interesting for me is that the thought
of how different the audiences are for that promotion.  Reaching the folks
who need to understand what the IRTF's output is and means is a very
different enterprise than reaching those who might need to understand what
the Internet Architecture Board has to say.  Given the acronym overload
there, a portion of that has to be making sure which IAB is talking, an
impact that the IAB or ISE would not feel.    But I think that actually
illustrates the problem folks have brought forward here:  if we were
promoting these voices, we would do so at least partly to very different
audiences.  That's may be an important signal.

Ted



> Eliot
>
> On 09.07.18 17:24, Ted Hardie wrote:
>
> In a different thread, Eric made a statement about the RFC Series being in
> conversation with other publications:
>
> The RFC series (and also I-Ds) have an important role to play here, but it
>> also exists in conversation with a lot of other publication venues, and I
>> think that's healthy.
>>
>
> While I agree with him, I think the metaphor of "conversation" is even
> more useful in describing both the current series and the question before
> us.  From my personal perspective, the primary reason we use "RFC" as a
> series identifier is to identify a specific set of technical documents as
> part of a common "conversation".  The adoption of the term and series by
> the IETF was a signal about the conversation their documents were to be
> part of; choosing a different document  series (like ANSI, ISO, or minting
> a new one) would have sent a signal about a different technical community
> with whom the IETF was in dialog.
>
> When the idea of different streams and stream managers gelled, we kept the
> same series identifier for all of them.  I think, personally, we did that
> because we wanted to be clear that all of the documents continued to be
> part of a larger conversation about the development of Internet
> technologies.
>
> One way to understand the problem motivating this BoF is also through the
> metaphor of conversation: many outside the community simply don't recognize
> that there are multiple voices inside that conversation.  They see all of
> the documents as utterances by a single, somewhat nebulous group.  That can
> cause problems.  Among those named earlier were the academic community's
> failure to value the output of the IRTF; vendors or customers not
> distinguishing consensus output from proprietary alternatives; and even a
> few efforts to get rejected ideas to appear to have been accepted ones.
>
> The question before us could be cast as:  is it more important now to
> highlight the different voices that the streams and statuses currently
> convey, so that others understand them as disctinct?
>
> As Eric points out, there are other ways to maintain a conversation among
> different groups than to make their output part of a single series.  There
> are also other ways we could try to make sure that we highlight that
> distinction more fully (using STD numbers for all IETF standards documents,
> for example, from proposed standard onward).  But I think this is the core
> of the tension, shorn of discussion of brand or history:  how to we get to
> the right balance of maintaining the conversation while improving the
> understanding that these are individual voices within it?
>
> My thoughts as individual,
>
> regards,
>
> Ted
>
>
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