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

[tom petch <[e-mail]>]

On 30/09/2021 21:01, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 01-Oct-21 07:05, Michael Richardson wrote:
>> Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> > On 30-Sep-21 04:07, Michael Richardson wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Barry Leiba <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> >> > I think that 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 should be in a weekly summary, one
>> >> > single message per week.
>> >>
>> >> Mailman has a digest mode.  Would that suffice?
>>
 >> > No, because from observation, most people who reply to a digest don't
>> > change the Subject to a useful string. This would be disastrous for
>> > Last Call workflows in particular.
>>
>> The categories proposed that would be on a list that would be digestable
>> would be (based upon what Barry wrote):
>>
>>>>>> 2.  Announcements of new and updated WG charters & WG closures = 44
>>>>>> 5.  Announcements of new RFCs = 275
>>>>>> 7.  Announcements of document actions = 175
>>>>>> 8.  Announcements of IESG conflict-review results = 14
>>>>>> 9.  Last call announcements for I-Ds = 174 (+ 4 for other actions)
>>>>>> 10. Interim WG meeting announcements = 256
>>
>> So, we'd need to not include Last Call Announcements in that list.
>> Then would it work for you?
>
> Not if it ever leads me to receive a message with a subject like
>
> Re: document-actions Digest, Vol 52, Issue 41
>
> That one would take many times longer before I could hit delete than
>
> Re: Document Action: 'Boring Stuff' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-boring-stuff-10.txt)

Spot on. Digests are dire, uninformative header, hard to find the real 
content in, unsuitable Reply to.

By contrast, I think that Last Call announcements get it almost right. 
The Subject line tells me whether or not I am interested, I only need 
the body for the date (which I would like to be more prominent).

I suggested earlier that while Last Call should each have a separate 
e-mail on some list, yet a weekly summary would cut by a factor of three 
the traffic on whatever is the new list. I did not mean digest! rather a 
customised e-mail taking the subject line of each Last Call announcement 
and putting it on a separate line in the body

e.g.

Last Call: <draft-ietf-regext-rfc7484bis-04.txt> (Finding the 
Authoritative Registration Data (RDAP) Service) to Internet Standard

Last Call: <draft-ietf-tsvwg-rfc4960-bis-15.txt> (Stream Control 
Transmission Protocol) to Proposed Standard

Last Call: <draft-ietf-netconf-notification-capabilities-17.txt> (YANG 
Modules describing Capabilities for Systems and Datastore Update 
Notifications) to Proposed Standard

or, less expansive,

Last Calls week ending ....

<draft-ietf-regext-rfc7484bis-04.txt> to IS

<draft-ietf-tsvwg-rfc4960-bis-15.txt> to PS

<draft-ietf-netconf-notification-capabilities-17.txt> to PS

PS: Proposed Standard
IS: Internet Standard

Tom Petch


>
>> A thing that I like about the digest option is that the archives (and IMAP)
>> would have the individual messages.
>
> But in my experience people reply directly to the digest.
>
> The bottom line is that people's workflows and email habits vary widely,
> so there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
>
>     Brian