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

[Nadim Kobeissi <[e-mail]>]

Hi Filippo,

You write:

> Excellent, sounds like you land at the same result as the chairs when tallying support by all participants. That’s promising!

Please take care not to misrepresent Tanja’s position. Tanja’s opening sentence in her email was:

> I can tally the emails on list, which were about even in favor and against.

Tanja’s assessment, when taking into consideration all participants, appears to have been something close to a 50/50 split.
The chairs’ assessment, when taking into consideration all participants [1], is different:

> By pure numbers, more people want to progress the document than not,


The chairs do not go into more detail than this, and “more people want to progress the document than not” could mean anything from a 51/49 split in favor of adoption to a 70/30 split or maybe more. It’s imprecise.

Tanja’s assessment is more precise and implies something closer to a 50/50 split.

You’ve made a good deal of noise correcting people when they call women participants on this list “Ms. X” instead of “Dr. X” [2] — I would advise you, if you truly want to make a difference in the enfranchisement of different voices on this list, to take care not to misrepresent their contributions. I suspect that would make a much bigger difference than haughtily correcting the usage of honorifics.

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/tPe7m_vpmDco43588yVW3JWrb8U/
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/jLmKnwk-nSTEJr8oT_H6YQ__da8/ 

Nadim Kobeissi
Symbolic Software • https://symbolic.software

> On 31 Jul 2026, at 10:35 AM, 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] <mailto:[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] <mailto:[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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