Why last calls matter more than ever [Re: Proposal: an "important-news" IETF announcement list]

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 30-Sep-21 12:07, Barry Leiba wrote:
>> I'm arguing that Last Call messages are of such importance to the
>> standards-making goal of the IETF that we really do have to send them
>> to as much of the community as we can.
> 
> The trouble with that is that if you really believe that and take it completely, we would be posting last-call announcements to every mailing list we have: all the WG lists, all the non-WG lists, all the lists that remain from closed groups, and whatever else.  I think few of us would 
like that.
> 
> If my last sentence is correct, then we really do have to understand that it’s more important to make sure that participants understand the importance of last call and where to find the last-call announcements… and then leave it to the community to do what they’re willing to do with that.  And that does not meal trying to force those announcements on people who don’t want them.
> 
> It was different when the IETF was smaller.  We need to accept that things have changed.

Absolutely. But that's exactly why I'm banging on about last calls, because the IETF is bigger than it was in 1995 and because we have multiple silos. I'm all in favour of reducing mundane announcements, so that people actually see the ones from outside their silo that are not mundane.

How would it be if a year's tally looked like this?

1.  Announcements sent manually by <various roles> = 284
2.  Last call announcements for I-Ds = 174 (+ 4 for other actions)
3.  Weekly summaries of other announcements = 52

I make that a 60% reduction in traffic.

  Brian