[TLS] Re: Improving the quality of the discussion on the TLS email list

[Orr Dunkelman <[e-mail]>]

As the ADs did not publicly release the criteria relevant to what is
considered "prior involvement" (would participation in one discussion
before the ML-KEM sufficient to be considered in this set of voices?) nor
what are the "experienced people" they deemed to be worthy of being heard
(i.e., newcomers who are experienced), it is a bit impossible to make the
statistics you have asked Tanja to make. Actually, even putting aside
mailing issues, moderation problems, and assuming that indeed all the votes
were indeed public, no one but the ADs can make these statistics. This is
exactly what reasonable people asked for in this mailing list (including
people from academia, industry and government) - to get these criteria
publicly available. Hence, contacting IESG, IAB, the UN, or even the local
fire brigade, is useless until the ADs supply this information.

Furthermore, during the discussion I've pointed out that one of the
co-designers of MLKEM found the idea of standardizing only MLKEM to be
premature. I am sure that when assigning weights to participants, one of
the guys inventing the thing (and especially as this particular individual
has years of experience in industry, so this is not just a theoretical
computer scientist with no understanding of the real world), should
probably get a somewhat higher weight than even people who participated in
past TLS discussions. As the ADs did not report counting this specific
individual's "vote" (that says that the entire idea is bad) it is unclear
whether it was taken into account. Actually, I hope to ask all the relevant
co-designers when I meet them in future conferences [relevant by my own
personal secret criteria].

Cheers,



On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 5:36 PM Filippo Valsorda <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Excellent, sounds like you land at the same result as the chairs when
> tallying support by all participants. That’s promising!
>
> Then, have you tried tallying support by “pre-existing WG participants or
> people with demonstrated expertise” using your own methodology? Did you
> land at a result significantly different from “roughly 7/10”?
>
> Assuming you’re not looking a priori for something to object to, if you
> come to the same conclusion using your own methodology, I don’t see what
> good demanding an itemized list would do.
>
> If you do come to a significantly different result, you can share your
> methodology in your appeal, and let the ADs, IESG, or IAB assess it.
>
> 2026-07-31 15:55 GMT+02:00 Tanja Lange <[e-mail]>:
>
> Dear Eliot, dear all,
> I can tally the emails on list, which were about even in favor and against.
> The chairs announced that by some process of discarding or weighing some
> votes
> they reach 70% in favor. To quote this verbatim
> "However, if we look at pre-existing WG
> participants or people with demonstrated expertise, roughly 7/10
> WG
> participants favor advancing the document, which shows rough
> consensus
> to move the document forward."
> The requests I've seen, starting right after the chairs announced their
> decision that there was consensus in favor of the document, are asking for
> which input was discarded or counted higher or lower. I cannot do the
> "homework" of checking this because I don't know the mechanism used.
>
> Additionally, the email asking for responses was sent with
> Reply-To: Joseph Salowey <[e-mail]>
> so that replies would go to Joe's address and to the list only if the
> sender
> chooses to reply to all (or edits the header manually), so there might be
> some
> emails that didn't go to the list and which therefore I cannot count when
> doing
> my homework.
>
> Finally, there are reports of messages not appearing on list despite the
> sender responding with the release code. We have seen some messages
> containing
> release codes appear on list (I hadn't seen that in any previous
> discussion).
> My understanding is that the chairs see those, and maybe that's where the
> chairs saw additional support, but I cannot count these in my homework.
>
> Hence, I would like to support the request for transparency of how the 7/10
> (quoted above) was reached.
>
> All the best
> Tanja
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 01:02:26PM +0200, Eliot Lear wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 31.07.2026 12:37, Ken Kubota wrote:
> >
> >     There have been repeated requests [1, 2] that the working group
> chairs release the participant chart/list/table publicly that supports the
> 70 % claim ("7/10 WG participants favor advancing the document" [3]).
> >
> > Unnecessary.  All the information used by the chairs is publicly
> available on
> > this list.  Do your own homework.  Stop making work for others.
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
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