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

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

--On Wednesday, September 29, 2021 10:08 -0400 Barry Leiba
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>> 1.  Announcements sent manually by <various roles> = 284
>> 2.  Announcements of new and updated WG charters & WG
>> closures = 44
>> 3.  (included in above 44)
>> 4.  Announcements of new non-WG mailing lists = 13
>> 5.  Announcements of new RFCs = 275
>> 6.  IESG and LLC telechat announcements = 39
>> 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
>> 
>> The "important-news" proposal would only retain those under
>> (1) above.
> 
> I think that 1, 4, and 6 should all be retained as is (and in
> the new list, if it's created).
> 
> I think that 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 should be in a weekly
> summary, one single message per week.
> 
> I think that when those under 10 are in a pattern (first
> Tuesdays, every second Wednesday) there should be one message
> that says that, and those messages should be immediately
> posted to the relevant working group lists and not wait for
> the weekly summary.
> 
> If we do that, there's probably no need for a new list, but I
> don't object to the new list.

Barry, 

I generally agree, but wonder about 6 and 9 because...

6.  IESG and LLC telechats (especially the former) occur on a
fixed schedule (as much or more so than the subset of 10 you
mention) so, while links and exceptions may be important, the
announcements ought to be routine and part of a summary (and, as
others have suggested, an available and downloadable calendar).

9. There are problems with pushing Last Call announcements for
I-Ds, especially I-Ds proposed for standards track or BCP
action, into a weekly summary. We would, I think, like to
encourage people to watch those things and step in on ones on
which they might have informed opinions, even if, for a given
participant, such Last Calls are only a few percent of the total
and all of the others will be deleted after skimming the subject
line.  However, consider the timing.  If the Last Call is for a
WG document and announced to the WG list on, say, a Monday, the
digest does not appear until Friday, and first announcement
starts the clock, we've cut the time that interested participant
has to read the document and comment by almost half.  Different
permutations of dates just affect different people and documents
badly unless we make other changes.  I can think about ways
around that but most involve tinkering with timing of LC
announcements or which ones count -- these are not just matters
of creating new lists or shuffling content distribution.  Of
course, Alexey's concern about searching by draft name is a
different aspect of much the same problem.

That brings me close to Eliot's consolidation suggestion but is
also a reminder of what others have said -- that, inevitably,
different people are going to find different things important
and hence that efforts beyond a certain point to really
fine-tune things may be doomed.  I'm also confident we could
come up with a different list of categories of announcements:
probably not much better than the one Lars posted, but probably
not much worse either.  

If we can concentrate on improving the S/N ratio on the
Announcement list --selective digests, avoiding four separate
interim meeting postings at the same time for the same WG,
encouraging calendar subscriptions, etc.-- then I think we
address the real problem while splitting up lists even more just
create distractions.

best,
   john