Re: Proposal: an "important-news" IETF announcement list

[Lars Eggert <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

thanks for the feedback!

On 2021-9-25, at 20:59, Christian Huitema <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The problem is that if most of those emails feel like noise, the receivers will most likely filter the mailing list and either ignore it all or put it in some folder for "view that when I have time". Noisy mailing lists get ignored, or just not subscribed.

or, given that many MUAs now offer one-click unsubscriptions, they unsubscribe if the first few messages seem irrelevant to them.

> I have two different sources of mixed feelings about this.
> 
> First, If we create an "important" list, will more people unsubscribe from the "announce" list? Is that the desired effect? If we do this experiment, will we monitor the "announce" list?

That's of course not the desired effect, and your suggestion to monitor the ietf-announce list is a good one. My personal belief is that people who are subscribed to ietf-announce see the value and would hence not unsubscribe, but that we might reach some of those people who are at the moment not subscribing to ietf-announce with a more focused list.

> Second, who exactly defines what is important?

The current proposal is that important-news would have all manual postings by the various organizational roles, i.e., everything under (1):

1.  Announcements sent manually
	34	by the IETF Chair/ED
	39	the IAB Chair
	0	the IRTF Chair
	0 	the Chair of the LLC Board
	136	the IETF Executive Director
	20	the NomCom Chair
	13	the IETF Tools support
	3	IANA
	1	ISOC
	38	and the IETF Secretariat

We would ask those posters to determine on a case-by-case basis whether a given announcement meets their bar for important-news or nor.

>  Is that another way to empower people in elected positions, relative to the average participant?

I'm not sure I follow. The "average participant" cannot post to ietf-announce now, and they wouldn't be able to post to important-news either. That ability was always restricted to certain org roles?

Thanks,
Lars