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

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, October 1, 2021 10:32 -0500 Robert Sparks
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Related but apart from discussion of what summaries might be
> sent by email -
> 
> There is a feed for last call documents at
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/feed/last-call, and a page at
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/in-last-call.
> 
> There are several feeds, fwiw. At one point there was a menu
> for them, but pressure to declutter the menus some time back
> took that away. There should at least be a summary page
> somewhere.

Robert,

Thanks.

Noting that a page the IETF participants don't know about or
don't know how to find is of limited utility, your paragraph
above exactly, if indirectly, summarizes part of the problem.
I've just looked at 
   https://www.ietf.org
   https://www.ietf.org/standards/process/
and even
   https://www.ietf.org/links/ 
(which only active participants who have been paying attention
know how to find).

And, if any of them contain the links you provided or even hints
that they exist, I'm not looking hard enough.  While, again, I
don't think that page is a substitute for well-considered Last
Call announcements (at least to the relevant WG, maybe Area, and
a weekly summary as others have discussed), it suggests that we
should be looking more broadly than tweaking or subdividing
mailing lists.  

Some particular suggestions that I assume should be
straightforward if others agree:

(1) Add https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/in-last-call to the
"links" page under "IESG", "Internet-Drafts" or both.

(2) Add a line to the bottom of the template for Last Call
announcements that says something like "A listing of open IETF
Last Calls is available at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/in-last-call

Really a different topic, but I also think the "links" page
should be more obviously available from the www.ietf.org home
page and wonder whether the Last Calls should be identified
there too.  However, I've lost track of who the audience for
that page is supposed to be and wonder if any evaluation is
underway for whether that redesign is serving its intended
purpose. 

best,
   john