Subject: [Gendispatch] Ending [email-masked]

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 19:21:14 -0700

Hi,

I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down [email-masked]
.

At this point, there are many other lists to discuss general IETF issues
(last-call@, arch@, gendispatch@, etc). So, the original catch-all purpose
of the IETF list is well-handled in many, if not all, cases.

What's left on the general IETF list seems to consist of general societal
or language issues that the IETF is not well-suited to address.
Additionally, some participants seem to be taking advantage of its large
audience and the list's IETF affiliation. Many of the posts seem better
suited to blog posts, email newsletters, forum posts, other venues where
the readers have opted in to such content.

I don't want to spend time on this document if I'm going to get flamed into
outer space without getting it published, but I think it's time.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 16:07:00 +1300

Hi Rob,

I hope nobody will flame you even a little bit, but I feel we won't readily find consensus to do this. Whereas I strongly support the concept of dedicated lists, I really don't see how we can manage without a catch-all. What we do need to do is to make sure that the regime for the catch-all list is generally acceptable and generally respected. How about "Make people *want* to be on the ietf@ list" as a goal?

If we did drop the list, I fear that *this* list (gendispatch) would soon become the catch-all. We've already seen warning signs of that.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 03-Apr-21 15:21, Rob Sayre wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>.
> 
> At this point, there are many other lists to discuss general IETF issues (last-call@, arch@, gendispatch@, etc). So, the original catch-all purpose of the IETF list is well-handled in many, if not all, cases.
> 
> What's left on the general IETF list seems to consist of general societal or language issues that the IETF is not well-suited to address. Additionally, some participants seem to be taking advantage of its large audience and the list's IETF affiliation. Many of the posts seem better suited to blog posts, email newsletters, forum posts, other venues where the readers have opted in to such content.
> 
> I don't want to spend time on this document if I'm going to get flamed into outer space without getting it published, but I think it's time.
> 
> thanks,
> Rob 
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 23:19:30 -0400

> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>.

Count me as strongly opposed to the idea.   The IETF is too fragmented 
as it is.   We need to build a greater sense of common purpose and 
common understanding of the problems that we face, not fragment the 
community even more.

Keith

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 20:19:39 -0700

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 8:07 PM Brian E Carpenter <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi Rob,
>
> I hope nobody will flame you even a little bit, but I feel we won't
> readily find consensus to do this. Whereas I strongly support the concept
> of dedicated lists, I really don't see how we can manage without a
> catch-all.

That might have been true when I joined the IETF list in 2005 or so (of
course many others have been around longer than that), but I've had it.

> What we do need to do is to make sure that the regime for the catch-all
> list is generally acceptable and generally respected. How about "Make
> people *want* to be on the ietf@ list" as a goal?
>

I agree with this email:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/sYAyAB4z_V71fYFhJ3Wc1_GoPic/

If we did drop the list, I fear that *this* list (gendispatch) would soon
> become the catch-all. We've already seen warning signs of that.
>

That would be bad, but this list is at least structured such that you have
to propose some action, like I am doing. The general IETF list provides a
venue to carry on about almost anything.

I think the issue is that some are using the name of the IETF, and the
valuable engineering work that many participants do, to capture an audience.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 23:27:22 -0400

> valuable engineering work that many participants do, to capture an 

I think the issue is that IETF is being destroyed by over-fragmentation.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 16:54:28 +1300

> I think the issue is that IETF is being destroyed by over-fragmentation.

How about a draft covering pros and cons of having [email-masked], and
describing identifiable & quantifiable problems?

Like Mark Nottingham, I recall disconnecting from the list after I stepped
down from the IAB, and again after I stepped down from the IESG, for
a few months respite. But then I joined again: because how else to know
what's going on outside the few WGs I can track in detail? ietf-announce@
and last-call@ are generally too late in the game. architecture-discuss@
and gendispatch@ don't cover everything.

The price of being on ietf@ is heavy use of the delete button, but that's
a price I can pay.

    Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 00:09:02 -0400

On 4/2/21 11:54 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> How about a draft covering pros and cons of [email-masked], and

I'd rather look for ways to improve/fix it than assume that it either 
has to stay just as it is or die.

Which is to say, I recognize that a lot of people don't like it the way 
it is, and a lot of people have already left. I just believe that 
shutting it down is the worst of all possible solutions.

Keith

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 22:33:53 -0700

> has to stay just as it is or die.

I think I will write a draft that proposes ending new posts to [email-masked]
.

There have been very valuable messages on that list in the past, but not
lately.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 14:48:55 +0000

*   I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>.

Strongly opposed.

Public discourse is messy.  Humans often suck.  Such is the price we have to pay. Shutting down this venue would only force it somewhere else, or perhaps underground.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 16:13:04 +0100

Hiya.

> [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>.

Same here. Closing [email-masked] is an awful idea that I
hope is quickly dropped.

> 
> Public discourse is messy.  Humans often suck.  Such is the price we
> have to pay. Shutting down this venue would only force it somewhere
> else, or perhaps underground.

That, and [email-masked] IMO fulfills many purposes, not all
written down - just as one minor example, one can often get
a useful impression of a posting from the set of previous
postings from the same author - I think such "features" would
be very likely missed should that list be closed and we'd
end up with all sorts of gaps that'd need filling.

A few related thoughts:

- I don't find it hard to process [email-masked] mails, and
anyone can unsubscribe, and I don't find the content to be
"toxic" - it's frequently irritating and often boring but
not much more than that.

- It's a bit sad that people on all sides of most of the
non-technical discussion on that list seem to be notably more
absolutist than was the case some years back. A bit more
tolerance of the imperfections of ourselves and esp. others
might help some.

- In contrast to absolutism perhaps increasing, I see no
change in our collective willingness to re-state opinions
and regurgitate arguments over the years - that seems the
same since I started reading IETF mails:-)

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Kyle Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 11:23:24 -0400

> tolerance of the imperfections of ourselves and esp. others

I can't opine on any of this better than Stephen just did, so I'm just
going to quote his email with a responding thumbs-up.

> same since I started reading IETF mails:-)

I don't have the long history of IETF involvement that you do, but knowing
many of the old-timers I am not at all surprised.

Kyle

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 09:19:46 -0700

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 7:48 AM Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  Shutting down this venue would only force it somewhere else, or perhaps
> underground.
>

That is the goal. The theory is that useful IETF content will find another
IETF list, and the rest can be written somewhere else.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 18:54:52 +0200

Hi Kyle,

> I don't have the long history of IETF involvement that you do, but knowing many of the old-timers I am not at all surprised.

Since I’ve been part of the party since 1988, I think it’s time for a change.  But I would rather it not be hasty (I feel one of Tolkien’s Ents saying that).

Opportunity for all to express a point of view is important in order to produce the best work, but the IETF list has the added challenge of being quite general and cross-cutting in nature, and that means that things tend to meander into the weeds.

Simply shutting down the IETF list, however, leaves us less of a community.  We need to figure out how to evolve a plenary function, and we should be thinking about all the modalities and tooling available to us.

Rather than view this as a complete negative, I suggest that we take this as a challenge to find an industry-leading way to improve overall decision making and discourse in an environment where rough consensus matters, without us getting too… rough.

Let’s not just allow for new possibilities here; let’s seek them.

Eliot

---

From: Andrew Campling <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 19:58:22 +0000

>Same here. Closing [email-masked] is an awful idea that I hope is quickly dropped.
>
>> 
>That, and [email-masked] IMO fulfils many purposes, not all written down - just as one minor example, one can often get a useful impression of a posting from the set of previous postings from the same author - I think such "features" would be very likely missed should that list be closed and we'd end up with all sorts of gaps that'd need filling.
>
> A few related thoughts:
>
>- I don't find it hard to process [email-masked] mails, and anyone can unsubscribe, and I don't find the content to be "toxic" - it's frequently irritating and often boring but not much more than that.
>
>- It's a bit sad that people on all sides of most of the non-technical discussion on that list seem to be notably more absolutist than was the case some years back. A bit more tolerance of the imperfections of ourselves and esp. others might help some.
>
>- In contrast to absolutism perhaps increasing, I see no change in our collective willingness to re-state opinions and regurgitate arguments over the years - that seems the same since I started reading IETF mails:-)

This is to note for the record that I'm also strongly opposed to the idea of shutting down [email-masked].  As others have stated, the community does appear to be pretty fragmented anyway and closing down this list would reinforce the increasing separation of the many IETF silos.  This will make it even harder for potential new participants to join fully and effectively, adding yet another barrier to inhibit progress in improving the overall diversity of the community.  

If anything there is a need to create additional avenues for the exchange of ideas and cross-fertilisation between the silos.  Without such linkages, you could make a case to disband the IETF and replace it with several small SDOs, possibly based on the current areas.  NB I'm not advocating this and think that it would be a disastrous idea!  

So instead of shutting down [email-masked] and increasing the sense of separation, let's consider how to re-energise cross-area, cross-working group interactions.  The lack of face-to-face meetings for the last twelve months has highlighted the important role that those meetings play in fostering the sense of community; what else can be done to augment those and the list to ensure that the IETF remains more than the sum of its parts?

Andrew

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 13:03:49 -0700

Rob,

I share your (and others) negative opinion of the IETF list. However, I
think it's also clear from this discussion that there is significant
opposition to having no "general" list at all.

>From my perspective, a lot of the problem is not so much that the list is
general, but that it is largely unmoderated. Long painful experience shows
that communities need tending if they are not to descend into a toxic mess,
and moderation is an important part of that tending. Our WG lists seem to
do better both because they are tightly scoped and because the chairs are
empowered to manage the discussion. In that vein, I think what's needed is:

- Having alternate venues for all normal business of the IETF, so that
nobody needs to subscribe to [email-masked]
- Much more active moderation on [email-masked], with the intent of
significantly reducing the level of acrimony and endless arguments.

We are well on our way to the first. I recognize the second would require
an RFC update, and I would support such a proposal.

-Ekr

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 9:20 AM Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:

> --
> Gendispatch mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch
>

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 13:05:00 -0700

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 12:58 PM Andrew Campling
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> >That, and [email-masked] IMO fulfils many purposes, not all written down
> - just as one minor example, one can often get a useful impression of a
> posting from the set of previous postings from the same author - I think
> such "features" would be very likely missed should that list be closed and
> we'd end up with all sorts of gaps that'd need filling.
> >
> > A few related thoughts:
> >
> >- I don't find it hard to process [email-masked] mails, and anyone can
> unsubscribe, and I don't find the content to be "toxic" - it's frequently
> irritating and often boring but not much more than that.
> >
> >- It's a bit sad that people on all sides of most of the non-technical
> discussion on that list seem to be notably more absolutist than was the
> case some years back. A bit more tolerance of the imperfections of
> ourselves and esp. others might help some.
> >
> >- In contrast to absolutism perhaps increasing, I see no change in our
> collective willingness to re-state opinions and regurgitate arguments over
> the years - that seems the same since I started reading IETF mails:-)
>
>
> This is to note for the record that I'm also strongly opposed to the idea
> of shutting down [email-masked].  As others have stated, the community
> does appear to be pretty fragmented anyway and closing down this list would
> reinforce the increasing separation of the many IETF silos.  This will make
> it even harder for potential new participants to join fully and
> effectively, adding yet another barrier to inhibit progress in improving
> the overall diversity of the community.

I find this to be a somewhat surprising suggestion. Subscribing to
[email-masked] seems like about the last thing I would advise a new
participant to do -- at least if I wanted them to continue to participate

-Ekr

---

From: Andrew Campling <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 20:15:16 +0000

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 21:05 Eric Rescorla [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> wrote:

> I find this to be a somewhat surprising suggestion. Subscribing to [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> seems like about the last thing I would advise a new participant to do -- at least if I wanted them to continue to participate

So what would you suggest to improve the way that [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> works?  How else could community interactions be improved?  What else can be done to make it easier for people to broaden their participation?

Andrew

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 21:21:50 +0100

While I don't at all agree with ekr as to how bad the current
state of affairs with ietf@ietf is...

On 03/04/2021 21:03, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> - Much more active moderation [email-masked], with the intent of

I do think the above would be a good thing - not moderation
to censor but to encourage better discussion.

Mind you, it's hard to think of a less appealing task to
ask someone to take on in an IETF context, so I don't
know if that's really feasible;-)

S.

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 13:29:41 -0700

> state of affairs with ietf@ietf is...

I think people usually post that irritating picture of the plane with
bullet holes at this point. :)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

> to censor but to encourage better discussion.

It wouldn't be censorship--people are free to post their thoughts
elsewhere. They're not entitled to the IETF list's audience.

> know if that's really feasible;-)

Yeah, I don't oppose efforts to make things better, along the lines of what
EKR and Eliot suggest. But I am skeptical that anyone will want to do this
task, and I am not sure what's worth saving, now that a lot of
the technical / last-call discussion has been carved off. That's how I
arrived at my so-far unpopular proposal.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 13:38:38 -0700

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 1:15 PM Andrew Campling
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 21:05 Eric Rescorla [email-masked] wrote:
>
>
>
> So what would you suggest to improve the way that [email-masked] works?
>

Perhaps our emails crossed in transit. I think the primary thing would be
for more active moderation, with the moderators given fairly wide
discretion to maintain order.

How else could community interactions be improved?  What else can be done
> to make it easier for people to broaden their participation?
>
>
Well, I don't really think of the [email-masked] list as much of an example
of broad participation. Rather, it's a generalized discussion list that in
my experience mostly is a source of pointless arguing.

In my experience most of the broad participation happens in smaller venues,
for instance in IAB workshops or when people from one area do work in/with
another area.

-Ekr

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 10:58:05 +1200

> Let’s not just allow for new possibilities here; let’s seek them.

Not against that, but please let us first clearly understand the purposes (plural) of such plenary discussions and the problems and benefits of the current solution.

I think the last 40 years have shown that whether the medium for a discussion is a Usenet newsgroup, a majordomo mailing list, or this new-fangled thing called "the Web", the underlying sociology and risks of time-wasting and abuse are much the same. So is the tension between moderation and freedom of expression. So a change of technology is certainly not guaranteed to improve things.

Regards
    Brian

---

From: Dan Harkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2021 16:35:15 -0700

On 4/2/21 8:19 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:
> <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/sYAyAB4z_V71fYFhJ3Wc1_GoPic/>

   Then unsubscribe and you won't have to worry about it any more.

   Problem solved!

   Dan.

-- 
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 17:18:15 -0700

On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 1:39 PM Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> Well, I don't really think of the [email-masked] list as much of an
> example of broad participation. Rather, it's a generalized discussion list
> that in my experience mostly is a source of pointless arguing.
>

>From looking at this list's web archive, rather than what makes it through
my mail filters, I can see this phenomenon has been illustrated yet again.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 23:09:37 -0400

On 4/3/21 4:03 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:

>
> From my perspective, a lot of the problem is not so much that the list 
> is general, but that it is largely unmoderated. Long painful 
> experience shows that communities need tending if they are not to 
> descend into a toxic mess, and moderation is an important part of that 
> tending.

In my opinion, such "moderating" as has been done in recent years by 
IETF leadership has contributed to making the IETF a considerably more 
toxic place.   A community in which dissenting views are suppressed, or 
in which the leadership believes it has the right to squash criticism, 
cannot credibly claim that it is a consensus-making body.

Keith

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 15:32:45 +1200

> cannot credibly claim that it is a consensus-making body.

Keith, I think you need to show your working... since the list archive
is open, we have data.

Certainly there is a case for ensuring that the moderation or sergeant
at arms activity is performed in a way that is accountable to the
community. If there's evidence that moderation has been used inappropriately,
let's discuss it. The list charter (BCP 45  = RFC 3005) says that complaints
can be addressed to the IAB. Has that ever happened?

We certainly haven't seen a PR Action for a long time now. (For anyone
who doesn't know, that's a community process for revoking posting rights
in extreme cases; see BCP 83 = RFC 3683.)

Regards
   Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 23:56:55 -0400

> Keith, I think you need to show your working... since the list archive

Given that a lot of the pushback seems to have occurred in private 
messages, I don't know how much the list archives could help.  But that 
pushback can still have a chilling effect and undermine trust in those 
who evaluate our work (if they are also entrusted with deciding which or 
whose input gets discouraged).

It's been suggested to me that the moderators should not take direction 
from the IETF Chair or IESG, but only from specific criteria that have 
been approved by IETF Consensus.   IMO this would be a positive step.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 00:27:30 -0400

> Rather than view this as a complete negative, I suggest that we take this as a challenge to find an industry-leading way to improve overall decision making and discourse in an environment where rou…

I have been wondering for awhile whether some enhancements to our means 
of distributing email to subscribers could yield a better experience for 
ietf@ in particular and perhaps other lists also. Imagine that instead 
of the list simply sending every message to every subscriber, the list 
could do per-subscriber filtering according to each subscriber's 
preferences.   Then a reader who got tired of a certain thread could 
press a "Don't show me any more messages from this thread" button.  The 
messages would still be archived so they wouldn't be inaccessible to the 
reader, but the reader wouldn't be interrupted by seeing such messages 
arrive or need to bother with deleting.

Another possible enhancement would allow a subscriber to follow a thread 
as it moved from one list to another.   That way, discussions could 
easily be taken off the "main" list of a particular group and moved to a 
"side" list.   So when, say, the ietf@ list gets into discussions 
between a small number of people, the moderator could say "take it off 
the ietf@ list and report back to us if/when you have reached some sort 
of agreement".   The discussion could move seamlessly (anyone who had 
contributed to the thread would automatically start seeing the side list 
traffic), and anyone else who wanted to follow that traffic could also 
watch those messages (or stop watching them) with a single button 
click.   Everything would still get archived with topics retained in the 
message headers.

(really, "lists" in this environment become more like "topics")

Another possible enhancement might be "remove me from replies to this 
thread".   The list software would then remove that subscriber from 
to/cc headers of messages from that thread that are posted to the 
list.   This wouldn't keep readers from doing "reply all" to messages 
they had already received, but it would reduce the number of replies 
sent to recipients who no longer wanted to be in a particular discussion.

Another possible enhancement would be "upvote" / "downvote" in response 
to a particular message from a list, and readers would see the number of 
upvotes and downvotes when they (re)read the message from the list or 
read it in the archive.   This would reduce the number of messages 
posted for no other reason than to say "+1".   (I've implemented this 
using <IMG> tags to point to images of the respective vote counts.   The 
results certainly weren't perfect, especially since many MUAs don't 
display images by default, but seemed potentially useful.)

One of the main problems with email in general is that it has become the 
default dumping ground for messages of dubious or marginal relevance 
from numerous sources.  This isn't just spam but also status messages, 
reminder messages, "you got a message on this other service (but we 
won't tell you what it is)" messages, you need to change your password, 
your disk storage is over quota, etc.   The overall interrupt overhead 
is too high.  So every extraneous message becomes that much more 
annoying.  Reducing the number of extraneous messages while still 
keeping the reader in control of what they see seems like a good idea.

I think the hardest part of implementing something like this is that it 
has to take as input a lot of messages in either plain text or various 
dialects of HTML and modify each message so that buttons can be added to 
the version of the message sent to each subscriber.   I've experimented 
with some of this in the past (e.g. trying to add an upvote/downvote 
button for each paragraph).   That didn't work nearly so well as I would 
have liked because it was hard to identify real paragraph boundares in 
the actual HTML sent in email messages - or for that matter in plain 
text email - but if the only place we need such buttons is on a 
per-message basis I think it's doable.

Anyway I think experiments along these lines could be fruitful, and I 
wonder if anyone else would like to help with this.

Keith

---

From: "Livingood, Jason" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 11:37:17 +0000

> Let’s not just allow for new possibilities here; let’s seek them.

I like the idea of seeking new solutions, speaking personally. I also think we unduly constrain our thinking when regularly assuming that collaboration & discussion requires email - time to perhaps move some types of interactions to new technical forms.

---

From: "Livingood, Jason" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 11:46:16 +0000

Very interesting list of desired features - hopefully it generates some brainstorming from others. I know we all like to quickly jump to possible technical solutions but this may be a case where continuing to define requirements/features/problems as below is better than jumping ahead too quickly. At some point some experiments will add value too.

On 4/4/21, 12:28 AM, "Gendispatch on behalf of Keith Moore" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:

    Keith

    --
    Gendispatch mailing list
    [email-masked]
    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch__;!!CQl3mcHX2A!XKd6cyD1NQ13Y-hNEl_1R_fLFRvQq0sTl7u0zrLSDXUAB_BdmxWhHmnYYJLoVyVGZPBUhA$

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 11:04:53 -0400

> Very interesting list of desired features - hopefully it generates some brainstorming from others. I know we all like to quickly jump to possible technical solutions but this may be a case where co…

thanks.   I would also like to see brainstorming from others. In this 
case I think experiments are low-effort and can be done without 
disrupting to the existing list software or servers, so there's no 
particular need to delay them.   As with all user interfaces, this one 
would need to be repeatedly evaluated and refined based on experience.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2021 11:15:34 -0400

> I like the idea of seeking new solutions, speaking personally. I also think we unduly constrain our thinking when regularly assuming that collaboration & discussion requires email - time to perhaps…

As far as I can tell, Dave Crocker and Jon Postel and their colleagues 
in the late 1980s had a much better handle on effective interpersonal 
communications than the developers of any of the other excuses for 
collaborative media that I've experienced to date.

At the same time, clearly email doesn't need to be stuck in the late 
1990s.   There's room for some improvement in email that takes advantage 
of better connectivity (in most but not all parts of the world), broader 
availability of server resources, perhaps ease of management, and so forth.

A lot of the effectiveness of an email-based approach depends on what 
user agents people use, which in turn influence their email reading 
habits.   For instance, I have no problem ignoring messages from threads 
that I don't find interesting, whereas other people seem to experience 
those messages as a huge burden.   I expect that the difference is 
related to the tools we are each using.   But there's a lot of inertia 
around the user agents and email systems that people use, and for 
multiple reasons it's hard for people to change tools.

I fully expect that whatever new ideas IETF came up with would 
eventually need a web interface, so that users would have multiple 
choices for how to access that system.

Keith

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2021 17:18:27 -0700

> opposition to having no "general" list at all.

I'm going to write this draft anyway. Most of the people that oppose this
idea seem to be among the very small population of regular IETF list
participants, and the traffic in the past few days has been very depressing.

I believe these people should create a blog or something. What they are
sending doesn't have much to do with the IETF.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 10:16:42 +0200 (CEST)

>     Il 04/04/2021 17:15 Keith Moore <[email-masked]> ha scritto:
> 
>     A lot of the effectiveness of an email-based approach depends on what user agents people use, which in turn influence their email reading habits.   For instance, I have no problem ignoring messages from threads that I don't find interesting, whereas other people seem to experience those messages as a huge burden.   I expect that the difference is related to the tools we are each using.   But there's a lot of inertia around the user agents and email systems that people use, and for multiple reasons it's hard for people to change tools.   
> 
>     I fully expect that whatever new ideas IETF came up with would eventually need a web interface, so that users would have multiple choices for how to access that system.
> 
Should the choice go for an email-based system, there are several open source webmail platforms that the IETF could adopt and customize to whatever UI is desired, like it did with Meetecho. People could still access their IETF email with other tools but the IETF webmail would give them special UI features, including custom email filters and integration with documents and perhaps even with git repos and with RFC tools, and with Meetecho itself. I am not fond of customized tooling but this is indeed a possibility.

-- 

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[email-masked] mailto:[email-masked] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

---

From: "Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 11:12:31 +0000

Hi Rob,

Looking at (and directly quoting from) RFC 3005, I think that it makes sense to split ietf@ into separate focussed lists.

We already have:
“last-call@” for “Last Call discussions of proposed protocol actions”
“ietf-announce”, for “Announcements of conferences, events, or activities that are sponsored or endorsed by the Internet Society or IETF.”

In addition to this, I think that we could/should have four more aliases:

  1.  “ietf-technical@” for “It furthers the development and specification of Internet technology through discussion of technical issues.” and “Discussion of technical issues that are candidates for IETF work,
      but do not yet have an appropriate e-mail venue”

  1.  “ietf-meetings@” for “Questions and clarifications concerning IETF meetings”.  It probably should automatically receive emails from the meeting specific lists
  2.  “ietf-policy@” for “It also hosts discussions of IETF direction, policy, and procedures. ” and “Discussion of IETF administrative policies”
  3.  “ietf-discuss@” for “General discussion related to the IETF, considerable latitude is allowed”

This could mean that “ietf@” should not exist, or perhaps it could be a non-postable alias for a subset of the lists above, e.g., perhaps ietf-announce + last-call + ietf-technical + ietf-meetings.

This might allow the IETF community to better tune into which lists/topics they would like to subscribe to.  I.e., if somebody is only interested in IETF because they want to progress technical standards then they can hopefully avoid some of the verbose non-technical threads whilst still be able to participate in constructive cross area technical discussions.

Regards,
Rob

From: Gendispatch <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Rob Sayre
Sent: 03 April 2021 03:21
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Gendispatch] Ending [email-masked]

Hi,

I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 09:37:10 -0400

> On Apr 6, 2021, at 7:12 AM, Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwilton=[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>  
> 
I respect and understand to some degree the desire of some IETF participants to “stay in the loop” on discussions of truly general interests while avoiding some kinds of ratholes, flame wars, or discussion of topics they consider irrelevant.  But I find IETF discussion already too fragmented as it is, and the current divisions between lists seem poorly chosen to me.  For instance, I don’t want to scan through all the messages in last call or announce, but I would like to be able to watch discussion about particular documents or working groups.  Also the endless “move the conversation to other list X” instructions are cumbersome and have a chilling effect on the discussion- splitting it up and discouraging some participants from following even if they want to.

I do think we need some kind of topic filtering but I think we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns with separate mailing lists.

Keith

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 14:05:43 +0000

>I do think we need some kind of topic filtering but I think we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns with separate mailing lists.

I agree.

At its worst, it becomes a kind of stick your fingers in your ears and say “la la la I can’t hear you.”

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:54:44 -0500

[Hopefully obvious, but with no hat on.]

Some of the things you mention can be done with current tools, though 
admittedly not all of them are the easiest to use. For example:

On 3 Apr 2021, at 23:27, Keith Moore wrote:

>> Rather than view this as a complete negative, I suggest that we take 
>> this as a challenge to find an industry-leading way to improve 
>> overall decision making and discourse in an environment where rough 
>> consensus matters, without us getting too… rough.
>
> I have been wondering for awhile whether some enhancements to our 
> means of distributing email to subscribers could yield a better 
> experience for ietf@ in particular and perhaps other lists also. 
> Imagine that instead of the list simply sending every message to every 
> subscriber, the list could do per-subscriber filtering according to 
> each subscriber's preferences.   Then a reader who got tired of a 
> certain thread could press a "Don't show me any more messages from 
> this thread" button.  The messages would still be archived so they 
> wouldn't be inaccessible to the reader, but the reader wouldn't be 
> interrupted by seeing such messages arrive or need to bother with 
> deleting.

Two things here:

First, you'll note that in the mailman options for every list, there's a 
box which says:

-----

**Which topic categories would you like to subscribe to?**

By selecting one or more topics, you can filter the traffic on the 
mailing list, so as to receive only a subset of the messages. If a 
message matches one of your selected topics, then you will get the 
message, otherwise you will not.

If a message does not match any topic, the delivery rule depends on the 
setting of the option below. If you do not select any topics of 
interest, you will get all the messages sent to the mailing list.

-----

The only problem here is that topics are defined by the list admin, 
which takes some work, and you can only update which topics you want to 
subscribe to through the web interface, which is a bit of a pain.

However, there is a second possibility, and it applies a bit to some of 
the below: There is now imap.ietf.org running an IMAP server containing 
all of the IETF list archives. It's all I use now to read my IETF list 
mail; I have turned off delivery of messages to my Inbox. Not only do 
most IMAP clients allow you to subscribe to only particular mailboxes 
(i.e., IETF lists), but most also have a lovely set of filter options 
such that you can view only messages that match filter criteria you 
specify on a per mailbox basis (or across mailboxes). I've been 
recommending to people for some time to move over to reading IETF mail 
on the IMAP server.

> Another possible enhancement would allow a subscriber to follow a 
> thread as it moved from one list to another.   That way, discussions 
> could easily be taken off the "main" list of a particular group and 
> moved to a "side" list.   So when, say, the ietf@ list gets into 
> discussions between a small number of people, the moderator could say 
> "take it off the ietf@ list and report back to us if/when you have 
> reached some sort of agreement".   The discussion could move 
> seamlessly (anyone who had contributed to the thread would 
> automatically start seeing the side list traffic), and anyone else who 
> wanted to follow that traffic could also watch those messages (or stop 
> watching them) with a single button click.   Everything would still 
> get archived with topics retained in the message headers.
>

Yeah, this one is more interesting. It could be dealt with using mailman 
topics, but could really use some specific tooling.

> list.   This wouldn't keep readers from doing "reply all" to 
> messages they had already received, but it would reduce the number of 
> replies sent to recipients who no longer wanted to be in a particular 
> discussion.

This is the old usenet "kill thread" command; easily implemented in 
IMAP, somewhat more complicated on the server side.

> Another possible enhancement would be "upvote" / "downvote" in 
> response to a particular message from a list, and readers would see 
> the number of upvotes and downvotes when they (re)read the message 
> from the list or read it in the archive.   This would reduce the 
> number of messages posted for no other reason than to say "+1".   
> (I've implemented this using <IMG> tags to point to images of the 
> respective vote counts.   The results certainly weren't perfect, 
> especially since many MUAs don't display images by default, but seemed 
> potentially useful.)

One possibility is of course moving to more of a forum-based messaging 
service or other non-email-based alternatives. But assuming sticking 
with email: Something like draft-crocker-inreply-react could be used. 
When Dave proposed this, I also suggested that it could be done using 
MDNs in a multipart/report format. Either might make sense here. Of 
course, again this puts the burden on the client to deal with.

I agree with your caveats, but I also agree that this is something worth 
pursuing.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 13:18:27 -0400

On 4/6/21 12:54 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:
>         Rather than view this as a complete negative, I suggest that
>         we take this as a challenge to find an industry-leading way to
>         improve overall decision making and discourse in an
>         environment where rough consensus matters, without us getting
>         too… rough.
>
>     Imagine that instead of the list simply sending every message to
>     every subscriber, the list could do per-subscriber filtering
>     according to each subscriber's preferences.   Then a reader who
>     got tired of a certain thread could press a "Don't show me any
>     more messages from this thread" button.  The messages would still
>     be archived so they wouldn't be inaccessible to the reader, but
>     the reader wouldn't be interrupted by seeing such messages arrive
>     or need to bother with deleting.
>
> Two things here:
>
> First, you'll note that in the mailman options for every list, there's 
> a box which says:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Which topic categories would you like to subscribe to?*
>
> If a message does not match any topic, the delivery rule depends on 
> the setting of the option below. If you do not select any topics of 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> which takes some work, and you can only update which topics you want 
> to subscribe to through the web interface, which is a bit of a pain.
>
Yeah, I've never found mailman's "topic" feature very useful for the 
reasons you list, and others.   I was thinking instead of a sort of 
automatic topic feature, derived from the message subject (removing Re: 
prefixes and list name, normalizing case and spaces, etc.) and perhaps 
the transitive closure of replies to other messages with that derived 
subject.
>
> However, there is a second possibility, and it applies a bit to some 
> of the below: There is now imap.ietf.org running an IMAP server 
> containing all of the IETF list archives. It's all I use now to read 
> my IETF list mail; I have turned off delivery of messages to my Inbox. 
> Not only do most IMAP clients allow you to subscribe to only 
> particular mailboxes (i.e., IETF lists), but most also have a lovely 
> set of filter options such that you can view only messages that match 
> filter criteria you specify on a per mailbox basis (or across 
> mailboxes). I've been recommending to people for some time to move 
> over to reading IETF mail on the IMAP server.
>
I'd love to make better use of that, and encourage more use of that, but 
I've personally spent hours trying to get it work satisfactorily with 
Thunderbird (recent versions) and have so far been unsuccessful.   
Perhaps you or someone else with more insight than myself can improve 
the documentation of that feature?   I think it's a very good idea, 
especially since it doesn't require a separate subscription for every 
list.   Though I wonder if it will ever be generally applicable to the 
entire set of IETF participants, which is what made me wonder about 
having the list expander do some of that work.

> I agree with your caveats, but I also agree that this is something 
> worth pursuing.

thanks.

Keith

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 11:56:25 -0700

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 4:12 AM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>
>
> This could mean that “ietf@” should not exist, or perhaps it could be a
> non-postable alias for a subset of the lists above, e.g., perhaps
> ietf-announce + last-call + ietf-technical + ietf-meetings.
>

Thanks for taking the time to write up this proposal.

I might simplify the proposal to:

[email-masked]:
 - “Discussion of technical issues that are candidates for IETF work, but
do not yet have an appropriate e-mail venue”
 - “Questions and clarifications concerning IETF meetings”
 - “Discussion of IETF administrative policies”

[email-masked]
- “General discussion related to the IETF, considerable latitude is
allowed”

It's not so much that I'm offended by what's written on the ietf@ list,
although that happens occasionally. I do feel like people are trolling and
otherwise taking advantage of the large (but shrinking) audience on the
list, though.

I don't think the IETF should host "[email-masked]" at all, but it
seems I'm in the rough there. This proposal would make the general IETF
list much more tightly moderated. The subscribers of [email-masked] wouldn't
be automatically subscribed to ietf-discuss, as they were for
[email-masked].

thanks,
Rob

> *From:* Gendispatch <[email-masked]> *On Behalf Of *Rob
> Sayre
> *Sent:* 03 April 2021 03:21
> *To:* [email-masked]
> *Subject:* [Gendispatch] Ending [email-masked]
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> I've been thinking about writing an I-D proposing to shut down
> [email-masked].
>
>
>
> (last-call@, arch@, gendispatch@, etc). So, the original catch-all
> purpose of the IETF list is well-handled in many, if not all, cases.
>
>
>
> I don't want to spend time on this document if I'm going to get flamed
> into outer space without getting it published, but I think it's time.
>
>
>
> thanks,
>
> Rob
>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 15:02:29 -0400

On 4/6/21 2:56 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:

> I do feel like people are trolling and otherwise taking advantage of 
> the large (but shrinking) audience on the list, though.

Just curious, can you be more specific about what you mean by "taking 
advantage of the...audience on the list"?

Keith

---

From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 07:50:13 +1200

> On 7/04/2021, at 6:56 AM, Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 4:12 AM Rob Wilton (rwilton) <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>  
> 
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>: 
>  - “Discussion of technical issues that are candidates for IETF work, but do not yet have an appropriate e-mail venue”

>  - “Questions and clarifications concerning IETF meetings”

This one should be [email-masked].

>  - “Discussion of IETF administrative policies”

This one could be [email-masked] if the other areas with admin responsibilities agree.  I would prefer that to avoid confusion.

Jay

> 
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> - “General discussion related to the IETF, considerable latitude is allowed”  
> 
> It's not so much that I'm offended by what's written on the ietf@ list, although that happens occasionally. I do feel like people are trolling and otherwise taking advantage of the large (but shrinking) audience on the list, though.
> 
> I don't think the IETF should host "[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>" at all, but it seems I'm in the rough there. This proposal would make the general IETF list much more tightly moderated. The subscribers of [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> wouldn't be automatically subscribed to ietf-discuss, as they were for [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>.
> 
> thanks,
> Rob
> 
>  
> From: Gendispatch <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> On Behalf Of Rob Sayre
> To: [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> Subject: [Gendispatch] Ending [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
>  
> 
> Hi,
> 
>  
> 

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked]

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 13:07:03 -0700

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 12:50 PM Jay Daley <[email-masked]> wrote:

> This one could be [email-masked] if the other areas with admin
> responsibilities agree.  I would prefer that to avoid confusion.
>

Those suggestions sound reasonable to me, although it might be a good idea
to have that list, last-call, the IESG, the IAB, and the RFC Editor post
summaries to ietf@ periodically, much like some WGs do with GitHub activity.

That way, people can track what's going on, but have a place to follow up.
All of those areas have (slightly) different norms at the moment, so that
actually sounds an improvement to me. I suppose that gets closer to Rob
Wilton's suggestion of a read-only alias.

I think it might be ok to leave it as a writeable list, though. That way
people can ask questions (which will hopefully get swiftly redirected).

thanks,
Rob

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 20:45:26 +0000

*   [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>:

  *    - “Discussion of technical issues that are candidates for IETF work, but do not yet have an appropriate e-mail venue”

  *   - “Questions and clarifications concerning IETF meetings”

  *   - “Discussion of IETF administrative policies”

  *   This proposal would make the general IETF list much more tightly moderated.

Should we take steps to encourage more women and under-represented groups of people into leadership? Where and how do we discuss that question?  And then, if the consensus is yes, where and how do we discuss mechanisms to do so?  How do we discuss whether or not to hold an online meeting or a F2F one, and how do we keep the conversation from getting into the “US dominates” discussion? Is this list moderated? Who appoints the moderators? Where can we complain about the job the moderators are doing? Will we be allowed to speculate on the vaccine distribution when decided if November is F2F? Can we be constrained to do that without comparing societies?

  *   I don't think the IETF should host "[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>" at all, but it seems I'm in the rough there.

From what I have seen, your proposal is in the rough.  I just looked at the 44 messages in this thread; there were under a dozen people, and nobody supported you.  (Maybe, if you squint, you could claim Stephen does.)  I assume you have private email that was in favor.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 21:54:26 +0100

On 06/04/2021 21:45, Salz, Rich wrote:
> From what I have seen, your proposal is in the rough.  I just looked
> at the 44 messages in this thread; there were under a dozen people,
> and nobody supported you.  (Maybe, if you squint, you could claim
> Stephen does.)
Eh? I think I said it was an awful idea. It still is IMO:-)

S.

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 20:56:01 +0000

I was trying to give Rob the benefit of the doubt in claiming support , since you did think moderation could be good but not implementable.

Sorry for mis-interpreting!!

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 13:57:05 -0700

Thanks for the unsolicited consensus call. :)

thanks,
Rob

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 1:56 PM Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I was trying to give Rob the benefit of the doubt in claiming support ,
> since you did think moderation could be good but not implementable.
>

---

From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 09:10:33 +1200

> On 7/04/2021, at 8:07 AM, Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 12:50 PM Jay Daley <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>> 
> This one should be [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>.
> 
> This one could be [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> if the other areas with admin responsibilities agree.  I would prefer that to avoid confusion.
> 
> Those suggestions sound reasonable to me, although it might be a good idea to have that list, last-call, the IESG, the IAB, and the RFC Editor post summaries to ietf@ periodically, much like some WGs do with GitHub activity.

I would prefer that to be [email-masked] as that list already has a high volume and a wide range of subjects.

Jay

> 
> That way, people can track what's going on, but have a place to follow up. All of those areas have (slightly) different norms at the moment, so that actually sounds an improvement to me. I suppose that gets closer to Rob Wilton's suggestion of a read-only alias.
> 
> I think it might be ok to leave it as a writeable list, though. That way people can ask questions (which will hopefully get swiftly redirected).
> 
> thanks,
> Rob
> 
> -- 
> Gendispatch mailing list
> [email-masked]

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked]

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 14:11:45 -0700

Hi Rich,

> Should we take steps to encourage more women and under-represented groups
of people into leadership? Where and how do we discuss that question?  And
then, if the consensus is yes, where and how do we discuss mechanisms to do
so?

Sure, you could make a mailing list or WG for that, but discuss it on the
IETF list prior to that.

> How do we discuss whether or not to hold an online meeting or a F2F one,
and how do we keep the conversation from getting into the “US dominates”
discussion?

I think that would be the admin list Jay mentioned.

> Is this list moderated? Who appoints the moderators? Where can we
complain about the job the moderators are doing?

I think most IETF lists have mechanisms for this. There's no reason to be
attached to a solution.

> Will we be allowed to speculate on the vaccine distribution when decided
if November is F2F? Can we be constrained to do that without comparing
societies?

This is a good example of a problem the IETF is not well-suited to
speculate on or address. I think they'll probably just do whatever the
professional event planners and insurance companies recommend. But, I don't
organize conferences.

> From what I have seen, your proposal is in the rough.  I just looked at
the 44 messages in this thread; there were under a dozen people, and nobody
supported you.

I think your message is a good example of something that drives people away
from the IETF: some back-and-forth messages you don't agree with, and then
the flames start.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 21:15:35 +0000

*   > From what I have seen, your proposal is in the rough.  I just looked at the 44 messages in this thread; there were under a dozen people, and nobody supported you.

  *   I think your message is a good example of something that drives people away from the IETF: some back-and-forth messages you don't agree with, and then the flames start.

Are you sure you mean me, and not yourself?  At any rate, I admire you sticking up for your idea in the face of universal dislike.

I’m pretty sanguine about what the outcome will be.

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 14:19:27 -0700

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 2:10 PM Jay Daley <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> I would prefer that to be [email-masked] as that list already has
> a high volume and a wide range of subjects.
>

I find that one really noisy. For example, I pasted a day I just picked out
of the archives. I suppose rolling things up the way I suggest would
require some curation, although it may be minimal.

Mar 26 2021
* Last Call: <draft-ietf-idr-ext-opt-param-11.txt> (Extended Optional
Parameters Length for BGP OPEN Message) to Proposed Standard, The IESG
* Audio/Video Transport Core Maintenance (avtcore) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-05-24, IESG Secretary
* WG Review: Effective Terminology in IETF Documents (term), The IESG
* WG Action: Rechartered QUIC (quic), The IESG
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-07-13, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-06-29, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-06-15, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-06-01, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-05-18, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-05-04, IESG Secretary
* IPv6 over Low Power Wide-Area Networks (lpwan) WG Virtual Meeting:
2021-04-20, IESG Secretary
* IETF 110 post-meeting survey results, IETF Executive Director

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 22:53:27 +0100

For the avoidance of doubt, I also think this split of lists
is not a good plan. 3 of the 4 would be hugely overlapping
and we already have manycouches and admin-discuss for the
4th. But my main reason is that proposals like this head us
towards more fragmentation at what I think is a moment when
we all and the IESG/IAB ought be prioritising more cohesion,
as we haven't met f2f for so long and might not for a while
yet.

So count me as also thinking this an awful idea, at present.
(Something along those lines might make sense in more normal
times, with a lot more discussion and thought put in first.)

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 17:55:19 -0400

> Thanks for the unsolicited consensus call. :)

properly understood, rough consensus is a distributed algorithm. IMO.

Keith

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 10:13:31 +1200

On 07-Apr-21 08:45, Salz, Rich wrote:
>  
> 
>   * [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>: 
> 

As Jay noted, we already have a separate list for that. On the other hand, we clearly needs a venue for

   * - Discussion of IETF process issues
   * - Discussion of IETF participation issues

If we don't have those as legitimate issues for a general list, they will end
up in odd places like gendispatch, which is supposed to be for preliminary discussion of actual proposals, not a standing BOF.

So there you have it: [email-masked] is a permanent BOF, and that needs active chairing. It's not getting it. The IETF Chair is too busy, and the SAAs are more like traffic cops than discussion chairs. I think that's the bug in the system (and has been for many years).

>   * This proposal would make the general IETF list much more tightly moderated.

I'd like to say: actively chaired, rather than managed by retroactive blame.

Regards
    Brian
>   * I don't think the IETF should host "[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>" at all, but it seems I'm in the rough there. 
> 
>  
>

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 15:15:16 -0700

> times, with a lot more discussion and thought put in first.)

The opposing argument is that the [email-masked] list is such a terrible
place that it is not driving cohesion, and is actively harmful.

I don't mind the other proposals on the list (like Eliot's), but I can't
believe anyone thinks the past few months of ietf@ are worth fighting for.

Maybe it's just the name that is misleading, since last-call@, i-d-announce@,
ietf-announce@, admin-discuss@ and other lists are more substantive.
Perhaps it should be renamed to [email-masked] or something
like that. I'm sure there would be a bunch of administrative RFCs to update.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 23:18:21 +0100

> place that it is not driving cohesion, and is actively harmful.

I've already stated my opinion of the list and made clear
that I do not agree with those who assert that the list
is "toxic" or a "terrible place." It's fine that you don't
agree with me but please don't assume that your description
is correct or complete.

S.

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 15:19:10 -0700

> I'd like to say: actively chaired, rather than managed by retroactive

I want to second this comment from Brian. I think that that would go a long
way.

-Ekr

Regards
>     Brian
> >
> >
> >
> > Should we take steps to encourage more women and under-represented
> groups of people into leadership? Where and how do we discuss that
> question?  And then, if the consensus is yes, where and how do we discuss
> mechanisms to do so?  How do we discuss whether or not to hold an online
> meeting or a F2F one, and how do we keep the conversation from getting into
> the “US dominates” discussion? Is this list moderated? Who appoints the
> moderators? Where can we complain about the job the moderators are doing?
> Will we be allowed to speculate on the vaccine distribution when decided if
> November is F2F? Can we be constrained to do that without comparing
> societies?
> >
> >
> >
> >   * I don't think the IETF should host "[email-masked] <mailto:
> [email-masked]>" at all, but it seems I'm in the rough there.
> >
> >
> >
> supported you.  (Maybe, if you squint, you could claim Stephen does.)  I
> assume you have private email that was in favor.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Gendispatch mailing list
> [email-masked]

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 23:22:13 +0100

> I want to second this comment from Brian. I think that that would go a long

Me too, though as before I dunno how the IETF chair/IESG will
manage to hoodwink some people into taking that on;-)

S.

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 15:45:30 -0700

> manage to hoodwink some people into taking that on;-)

I think the last message you sent to ietf@ was this one:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/VGxz5-hlsBrSHjUCn1MOTB7M21A/

where someone decided to compare "Diversity and Inclusion" with
"Disagreements about Encryption".

I am not sure why you think that is a productive list to engage with, or
even have, although I agree with what you wrote in that ietf@ message.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 01:19:29 +0100

Hiya,

On 06/04/2021 23:45, Rob Sayre wrote:
> I am not sure why you think that is a productive list to engage with,

It's not a problem that some things in the world are less
easily understood than others - or at least I've grown to
accept my lack of understanding of many things:-)

I think there's value in a set of technically capable people
who have more or less nothing else in common working on
making the Internet better because that's what they want to
do. IMO that inherently requires that parts of the discussion
are very noisy and very annoying. I figure that is necessary
otherwise we'd need to start requiring that we have other things in 
common, thereby falsifying the 2nd axiom above.

Attempting to avoid that noise and annoyance seems to me
to be missing a significant part of the point of the whole
thing.

And yes, I also expect, and am happy, that the above is not
universally accepted amongst the set of people involved. And
sure, the above is also idealistic and reality is messier,
but that's also ok IMO.

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 10:23:28 +1000

Remembering that *this* is not a general discussion list, perhaps we could focus on the dispatch question here.

Rob says he's going to produce a draft; I made a different proposal on the subject a while back. Others have come up with yet different approaches.

How should the IETF make a decision about what to do with ietf@? There's clearly *some* amount of desire to make changes in the community, but it's also clearly contentious in the details.

I'd observe that last-call@ was introduced by the IESG after community consultation. Is that a potential path for dispatch -- i.e., saying "IESG, you might want to look at this..."?

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 17:46:08 -0700

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 5:23 PM Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'd observe that last-call@ was introduced by the IESG after community
> consultation. Is that a potential path for dispatch -- i.e., saying "IESG,
> you might want to look at this..."?
>

That would be preferable, I think. It's only bubbling up here because
nothing has been done for several years.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 01:29:29 +0000

ietf@ is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant?

Shrug.

I agree with what Stephen wrote.  It's not optimal for almost anyone.  People rarely are.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 21:32:16 -0400

> sure, the above is also idealistic and reality is messier,

+1

The more I read of this thread, the more I think that the most toxic 
aspect of the ietf@ list is the people who incessantly complain about 
the toxicity of the ietf@ list to anyone (and to any list) they think 
will listen.

I'm sort of inclined to think there should be a new rule for the ietf@ 
list - you subscribe to this list voluntarily, and you can unsubscribe 
at any time.   You might not like it, but some people do find it 
valuable even with all of its warts, and believe that the list would be 
less valuable if only posts that nobody could possibly find 
objectionable were allowed.

The rule for being on the ietf@ list should be this: No complaining 
about the content on the ietf@ list, and no complaining about what 
you're missing out on by not being on the ietf@ list.

(If it's absolutely necessary to rename the list to something else so 
that people won't feel like they are somehow required to be on the list, 
I suggest [email-masked])

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 21:33:56 -0400

> ietf@ is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant?

IMO IETF would be a much more effective organization if more of its 
participants were aware of that parable.

Keith

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2021 23:26:33 -0500

> place that it is not driving cohesion, and is actively harmful.

You keep saying this.  The subtext I hear is that you find specific
individuals (or what they say) harmful.  There isn't a very large
plausible list of such individuals for you to so dislike, so I think
this is pretty close to a personal attack on them (us??).  Please tell
me I'm wrong.

So this is how it is.  Attacking a group of unidentified participants is
OK.  Naming the people one is attacking, is not OK.  Except that if the
group of unidentified participants being attacked is small enough and
easy enough for anyone who cares to to identify, then that has to be
violating the spirit of the rules if not the letter of the rules.  And
also probably committing libel.  Once people start losing jobs or
business, we'll have several participants here having incurred civil
liability for libel, to say nothing of the IESG and ISOC -- let's not
even think of reaching that stage.

Henceforth I will call out every instance of name calling, implicit or
explicit, that I find on these threads.  I've already started, as you've
seen.  I've had enough.  No more implying that Viktor, Dan, myself, or
any others who disagree with you are bigots, racists, or whatever.  Stop
it.

No more bullying.  No more name calling.  No more intimidation.

Nico
--

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2021 08:41:17 -0500

On 6 Apr 2021, at 19:23, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> consultation. Is that a potential path for dispatch -- i.e., saying 
> "IESG, you might want to look at this..."?

Yep, that's on the list in the charter:

- Requesting that the the IESG or the IETF LLC consider taking up the 
work.

Nonetheless, I think the IESG would appreciate a draft to look at.

pr

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 12:35:17 -0400

Having watched dozens of standards bodies like the IETF try to assess 
themselves for the past forty plus years - generally not well - this 
list seems to follow the norm.  There are a relative handful of people 
on this list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of the posts 
are from just 21 people who are almost all insiders perpetuating status.

Perhaps the most significant issue facing the IETF was raised by Phil on 
31 March - namely that the lack of transparency of interest is an 
increasing challenge to the organisation - especially with 
anticompetitive behavior becoming the subject of regulatory scrutiny and 
litigation.  The metrics of this list underscores the challenge - the 
principal proponents and decision shapers/makers lack attribution.

During Steve Lukasik's last years, he viewed the IETF as one of his 
principal failures.  It was a great idea when he signed off on its 
initial precursor formation to get out-of-the-box collaboration among 
the researchers that DARPA was funding. Attribution as well as 
collaboration incentives existed through the funding mechanisms.  
However, when it was cut loose in the 1990s, any sense of attribution of 
individual contributors and decision shapers was lost.  As Phil notes, 
it opened the door was opened for all kinds of mischief; and in contrast 
to almost all other standards bodies, the IETF is alone in avoiding 
attribution. Getting the LLC to buy more liability insurance has its limits.

The IETF's diversity challenge is also tied into the lack of 
transparency.  If you crunch the numbers and examine how relatively few 
registrants for IETF meetings continue their participation, the 
organization is effectively self-distilling around a set of hardy 
perennials who are motivated by un-attributed factors to stick with the 
organization to pursue some obscure objectives.  Indeed, the IETF's 
substantial insularity and institutional self-aggrandisement coupled 
with a set of rapidly evolving technologies progressed in other far more 
active and effective bodies, does not bode well.

So all of the above suggest that maintaining a generic IETF discourse 
list is probably a good thing.  --tony r

Posts 	%/posts 	accum % 	From 	attribution ?
76 	10.1% 	10.1% 	Keith Moore 	network-heretics.com
68 	9.0% 	19.0% 	Brian E Carpenter 	gmail.com
61 	8.1% 	27.1% 	Fernando Gont 	gont.com.ar
42 	5.6% 	32.7% 	Dan Harkins 	lounge.org
41 	5.4% 	38.1% 	Pete Resnick 	episteme.net
40 	5.3% 	43.4% 	Salz, Rich 	akamai.com
24 	3.2% 	46.6% 	Francesca Palombini 	ericsson.com
24 	3.2% 	49.7% 	Rob Sayre 	gmail.com
20 	2.6% 	52.4% 	Alissa Cooper 	cooperw.in
20 	2.6% 	55.0% 	Eliot Lear 	cisco.com
18 	2.4% 	57.4% 	Lars Eggert 	eggert.org
18 	2.4% 	59.8% 	Niels ten Oever 	digitaldissidents.org
16 	2.1% 	61.9% 	Eric Rescorla 	rtfm.com
16 	2.1% 	64.0% 	Mark Nottingham 	mnot.net
16 	2.1% 	66.1% 	Stephen Farrell 	cs.tcd.ie
15 	2.0% 	68.1% 	Bron Gondwana 	fastmailteam.com
15 	2.0% 	70.1% 	Joel M. Halpern 	joelhalpern.com
12 	1.6% 	71.7% 	Christian Huitema 	huitema.net
12 	1.6% 	73.3% 	John Levine 	taugh.com
11 	1.5% 	74.7% 	Jay Daley 	ietf.org
11 	1.5% 	76.2% 	Livingood, Jason 	comcast.com

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 12:55:01 -0400

Tony,

An email address is not attribution, and you know it.

Furthermore IETF participants are supposed to represent their own 
technical views as to what is best for the Internet as a whole, NOT 
represent some company that in your mind might make them seem 
"attributed".   This is a feature.

Keith

On 4/7/21 12:35 PM, Tony Rutkowski wrote:
> on this list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of the 
> posts are from just 21 people who are almost all insiders perpetuating 
> status.
>
> Perhaps the most significant issue facing the IETF was raised by Phil 
> on 31 March - namely that the lack of transparency of interest is an 
> anticompetitive behavior becoming the subject of regulatory scrutiny 
> and litigation.  The metrics of this list underscores the challenge - 
> the principal proponents and decision shapers/makers lack attribution.
>
> However, when it was cut loose in the 1990s, any sense of attribution 
> of individual contributors and decision shapers was lost.  As Phil 
> notes, it opened the door was opened for all kinds of mischief; and in 
> contrast to almost all other standards bodies, the IETF is alone in 
> avoiding attribution. Getting the LLC to buy more liability insurance 
> has its limits.
>
> transparency.  If you crunch the numbers and examine how relatively 
> few registrants for IETF meetings continue their participation, the 
> perennials who are motivated by un-attributed factors to stick with 
> the organization to pursue some obscure objectives.  Indeed, the 
> IETF's substantial insularity and institutional self-aggrandisement 
> coupled with a set of rapidly evolving technologies progressed in 
> other far more active and effective bodies, does not bode well.
>

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 13:30:47 -0400

Hi Keith,

The email based attribution helps, and many standards bodies enforce 
their use for attribution.

You have to buy into the religion to believe the existence of "the 
Internet" and "represent their own technical views" mantras. It has been 
one of the IETF's principal liabilities since assuming religious status 
in the early 1990s.  It rather resembles QAnon, or maybe the Tooth 
Fairy.  You have to buy into the shtick to be part of the group.  Most 
people do not - which is why they just leave as apostates.

As an agnostic who has participated in innumerable groups over the 
decades, they all admittedly have their quirks.  They are effectively 
clubs of like minded individuals who share common objectives.  Because 
many if not most of them are insular, they tend to seem themselves as 
the center of their mini-worlds.

They IETF has had a lucky ride courtesy of the Clinton Administration.  
That's not going to last much longer; and how the organization gets out 
of the box will be a challenge.  In the meantime, there is some value in 
mining the intelligence and IPR flowing through it.

--tony r (just an agnostic analyst)

ps. In the long arc of history, arguably the IETF did it's best work in 
the mid to late 1980s.

On 07-Apr-21 12:55 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
>> list seems to follow the norm.  There are a relative handful of 
>> people on this list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of 
>> the posts are from just 21 people who are almost all insiders 
>> perpetuating status.
>>
>> notes, it opened the door was opened for all kinds of mischief; and 
>> in contrast to almost all other standards bodies, the IETF is alone 
>> in avoiding attribution. Getting the LLC to buy more liability 
>> insurance has its limits.
>>

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 13:35:28 -0400

> their use for attribution.

That's their choice.  It doesn't apply to IETF.

Keith

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 11:23:02 -0700

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 6:41 AM Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> wrote:

> - Requesting that the the IESG or the IETF LLC consider taking up the work.
>

I don't feel the need to drive here. If Mark wants to, that's fine with me.
This problem seems to be a bit of a hot potato.

But I'll put on my flame-retardant pants and write the I-D if necessary. :)

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 15:37:17 -0400

Hi Keith,

Of course.  The point is that the IETF during the transition from its 
DARPA/NSF instantiation to a more public one, failed to give attention 
to the pernicious effects of a lack of definitive participant 
attribution which was well known in other standards bodies, and adopted 
a children's myth of doing good for the internet mantra.  It is like the 
Sydney Powell defense - no rational person would believe the myth.

The lack of attribution transparency creates both significant antitrust 
exposure, as well as incentives for extremists to control the 
organisation.  That was papered over with lots of liability insurance, 
substantially increased patent filings, and an equally opaque, a 
byzantine faux approval mechanism that obfuscate responsibility and 
dampen diversity.  The ultimate determinant - what gets adopted in the 
networking marketplace - also controls the behaviour.

In a kind of Back to the Future scenario, the IETF will probably have a 
place for attracting academic activists and mining their ideas and 
participant intelligence during the 70s and 80s.  If it wants to do more 
in the future, however, it needs to clean up its institutional act and 
implement effective transparency mechanisms.

--tony (apostate analyst and not afraid of going to internet hell)

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 15:53:16 -0400

Tony,

Whatever.

Keith

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 10:07:33 +1000

My position is still best summarised here:
  https://mnot.github.io/I-D/discussion-recharter/

Cheers,

> On 8 Apr 2021, at 4:23 am, Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> I don't feel the need to drive here. If Mark wants to, that's fine with me. This problem seems to be a bit of a hot potato.
>

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 17:11:23 -0700

>   https://mnot.github.io/I-D/discussion-recharter/

Ah, I've read this draft before, and I agree with what it says, as far as
it goes.

I'll think about combining this and R. Wilton's ideas.

thanks,
Rob

> > I don't feel the need to drive here. If Mark wants to, that's fine with
> me. This problem seems to be a bit of a hot potato.
> >

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 15:02:20 +1000

Tony,

At the risk of going wildly off-topic, I feel compelled to respond with my perspective.

> On 8 Apr 2021, at 2:35 am, Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Having watched dozens of standards bodies like the IETF try to assess themselves for the past forty plus years - generally not well - this list seems to follow the norm.  There are a relative handful of people on this list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of the posts are from just 21 people who are almost all insiders perpetuating status.  

If you want to make a claim like 'insiders perpetuating status', please support it; on the face, it seems more rhetorical than factual.

> Perhaps the most significant issue facing the IETF was raised by Phil on 31 March - namely that the lack of transparency of interest is an increasing challenge to the organisation

I don't agree that it's the most significant issue, by a long shot. As Kieth says, the ability for people to act as individuals here is a feature, not a bug. Furthermore, the cultural issues we're experiencing eclipse that issue easily.

> - especially with anticompetitive behavior becoming the subject of regulatory scrutiny and litigation.  

You seem to be claiming that the IETF's policy of individual participation, rather than company representation, is inadequate to prevent anti-competitive behaviour -- specifically the kinds that are currently under investigation, as widely reported in the news -- and therefore the IETF is somehow potentially liable. This connection is worth digging into, because this is not the first attempt to leverage the current headlines about competition law activity to argue for change in SDOs (see recent discussions in the W3C, for example).

EU and US competition law (statutory and case) as well as regulatory guidance documents have a lot to say about standards bodies regarding cartel behaviour (e.g., exclusion, price fixing). They also extensively cover abuse of dominance regarding IPR (patent ambush / standard-essential patents). However, they have very little to say (to date) regarding other forms of abuse of dominance in connection with SDOs -- and that's the focus of the activity that you reference.

So it's not yet clear what the relationship of standards bodies to these abuses should be. In particular, while personally I'd argue that standards are a factor that a competition regulator should take into account when considering this type of enforcement action, it isn't yet established that something becoming a standard offers any defence for abuse of dominance. Furthermore, a _responsibility_ for SDOs (and other horizontal agreements) to prevent these other theories of abuse has not been established. 

Given that, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it would be premature for the IETF (or any other SDO) to reconfigure itself or change participation rules in reaction to these mere complaints (which may be resolved by courts in a variety of ways) and in absence of specific guidance from competition regulators. Instead, I'd very much like to see the IETF (and the W3C) enter into a dialogue with competition regulators to see if we can identify the attributes that they might find useful in standards and standards processes in making such determinations.

But ignoring all of that, let's say that Google (using them only as an example, since they're one of the focal points in these discussions) employees make some proposals without identifying themselves as such, and somehow no one notices that a) they come from Google, and b) they advantage Google over its competitors in a relevant market (noting that there's some latitude in how the effected market is connected to their power) without resorting to IPR abuse.

I'd argue that the IETF's lack of recognition for affiliation at worst has no effect on the outcome, and may even balance _against_ abuse of dominance in this circumstance. This is because proposals need to gain a rough consensus of all participants based upon technical merit (_not_ straight up/down voting), without regard to affiliation. Adding affiliation would only marginally increase visibility for any ex post enforcement action; if the process is properly run, it should not have great effect on the standards outcome itself.

Of much greater concern would be a potential abuse of dominance with effect upon a market that isn't well-represented in the IETF -- an issue which we tried to raise in RFC8890. Even then, linking the abusive effect to the market where the standard is operative could be quite problematic.

> The metrics of this list underscores the challenge - the principal proponents and decision shapers/makers lack attribution.

While your metric of attribution on this list is interesting, your claim about the leadership is simply not true; the IAB and IESG identify their members' affiliations on their respective home pages, and the NOMCOM is known to affiliation into account when selecting nominees. WG Chairs are selected with affiliation in mind and widely known, in my experience. Furthermore, proposals in the form of Internet-Drafts carry affiliation information; for example, it was very obvious and widely known that QUIC was a proposal from Google.

> During Steve Lukasik's last years, he viewed the IETF as one of his principal failures.  It was a great idea when he signed off on its initial precursor formation to get out-of-the-box collaboration among the researchers that DARPA was funding.  Attribution as well as collaboration incentives existed through the funding mechanisms.  However, when it was cut loose in the 1990s, any sense of attribution of individual contributors and decision shapers was lost.  As Phil notes, it opened the door was opened for all kinds of mischief; and in contrast to almost all other standards bodies, the IETF is alone in avoiding attribution. Getting the LLC to buy more liability insurance has its limits.
> 
> The IETF's diversity challenge is also tied into the lack of transparency.  If you crunch the numbers and examine how relatively few registrants for IETF meetings continue their participation, the organization is effectively self-distilling around a set of hardy perennials who are motivated by un-attributed factors to stick with the organization to pursue some obscure objectives.  Indeed, the IETF's substantial insularity and institutional self-aggrandisement coupled with a set of rapidly evolving technologies progressed in other far more active and effective bodies, does not bode well.

Again, 'substantial insularity and institutional self-aggrandisement' seems more rhetorical than a basis for useful discussion.

> So all of the above suggest that maintaining a generic IETF discourse list is probably a good thing.  --tony r 

That is a *huge* leap  -- can you show us your workings?

Cheers,

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2021 23:05:56 -0700

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 10:02 PM Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]> wrote:

> themselves for the past forty plus years - generally not well - this list
> seems to follow the norm.  There are a relative handful of people on this
> list, and the participation is highly skewed.  3/4 of the posts are from
> just 21 people who are almost all insiders perpetuating status.
>
> If you want to make a claim like 'insiders perpetuating status', please
> support it; on the face, it seems more rhetorical than factual.
>

Seems like a strange claim, indeed. I don't even know what that "status"
would be. For my part, I just have my email client ignore anyone that is a
pain, and I don't work for anyone. :)

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 13:05:43 +0100

> At the risk of going wildly off-topic, I feel compelled to respond with my perspective.

Well said.

Thanks,
S.

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 17:00:50 -0700

I looked into this a bit more, and re-read RFC 3005 (which does not seem to
be being followed). Mark's draft is useful, and correctly describes many
issues, but I think a document that obsoletes RFC 3005 is what's required.

I wrote this as a first draft:

## Charter for the General IETF Mailing List

The general IETF mailing list, [email-masked], exists to communicate the
activities of the IETF as a whole. While discussion is permitted, the list
is not intended to host lengthy discussions on any topic. As this is the
most general IETF mailing list, participants SHOULD first seek more
appropriate venues before sending a message. If that effort fails, asking
questions about where or how to address an issue is OK.

The general IETF list also distributes brief summaries from related
organizations, such as the IESG, IAB, ISE, the RFC Editor, and the IETF
Administrative function. These updates SHOULD contain recommendations on
the correct venue for discussion. Other lists, such as [email-masked]
and [email-masked] contain more detailed records, such as specific
dates for interim WG meetings.

Advertising, whether to solicit business or promote employment
opportunities, falls well outside the range of acceptable topics, as do
discussions of a personal nature.

## Charter for [email-masked]

Historically, the general IETF list allowed more free-flowing discussion.
In order to respect the time of the IETF's many participants, these
discussions now reside at [email-masked]. This list furthers
the development and specification of Internet technology through discussion
of technical issues. It also hosts discussions of IETF direction, policy,
meetings, and procedures. As this is the IETF mailing list with the most
general charter, considerable latitude is allowed. [...recommendations from
Mark's draft...]

Advertising, whether to solicit business or promote employment
opportunities, falls well outside the range of acceptable topics, as do
discussions of a personal nature.

## Obsoleting RFC 3005

Since RFC 3005 does not distinguish between [email-masked] and
[email-masked], there must be a process that creates the
distinction. The policies outlined above for [email-masked] will become
effective when this draft becomes a BCP. Participants will not be
automatically subscribed to [email-masked], but the IETF Chair
will post a notification when this change policy becomes effective, and
will do so on a montly basis for six months.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 17:16:09 -0700

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 5:00 PM Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  the IETF Chair will post a notification when this change policy becomes
> effective, and will do so on a montly basis for six months.
>

Oof, messy last sentence. Should be:

"...when this change [in] policy becomes effective, and will do so on a
mont[h]ly basis for six months."

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 18:31:07 -0700

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 5:00 PM Rob Sayre <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I looked into this a bit more, and re-read RFC 3005 (which does not seem
> to be being followed). Mark's draft is useful, and correctly describes many

Well, I definitely got some off-list feedback about this one. I'll write it
up as a real I-D (fixing the typos), and then let the chairs decide what
happens next. A lot of the feedback was negative, which I think is fine.
That means the text is at least addressing issues people care about.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2021 15:56:37 -0400

Hi Mark,

It was good to see a recognition that the IETF has a potentially 
significant antitrust exposure and willingness to increase the 
transparency mechanisms as a first step.  The exposure here is not new.  
The first major independent analysis of the topic occurred in 1994 by an 
external lawfirm.  I know, because I signed the check, and then signed 
for the liability insurance.  Over the years and especially during the 
past decade, almost all significant standards bodies individually and 
collectively have engaged in activities to diminish the exposure and 
develop related sets of organisational practices.  The IETF has been 
largely a non-participant outlier, ignoring the problems; although the 
relatively recent formation of the LLC and work of legal counsel have 
made some improvements.

The IETF has long been "easy pickings" for antitrust behaviors because 
of the lack of transparency and other organisational practices which 
enable the adoption of a IETF standards that enable a company to acquire 
significant market share for a product or service.  I believe there was 
testimony in recent litigation that an IETF specification was worth 
about $4 million.  Continuing participation in the IETF is very costly 
and the number of participants attributed to a few specific companies or 
(as noted by Phil H-B, unattributed operatives) at meetings is a 
testament to beneficiaries.

The observation that the IETF's problems today extend well beyond 
anticompetitive behavior seems spot on.  The participant and work item 
metrics show that major contemporary specification development and 
engagement today have shifted rather massively to venues like 3GPP.  The 
IETF remains stagnant.  Large numbers of academics flow in and out to 
mine ideas and advance their academic studies.  Few companies want to 
pursue anything there anymore except for a comparative handful trying to 
leverage a few more years and dollars out of legacy technologies.

The tendencies in the IETF to be abusive and intolerant - especially to 
people who are apostates - has unfortunately been standard practice in 
the IETF in the past few decades.  If you reject the religious mandates 
of the IETF, you are declared "off topic," or fail to get a group 
started, or told to go elsewhere - often in abusive ways.  The 
intolerant behavior is especially difficult for those in many 
non-Western cultures.  These are the bigger problems of the IETF.

All organisations are largely incapable of analysing themselves and 
understanding their strengths and weakness in the larger ecosystem.  The 
tendency is to reject criticism - even when it is essential.  It seems 
worth not only maintaining a generic discourse list, but to encourage 
dissident and critical participation without dismissing commentarity as 
rhetorical and pile-on behavior.  Occasional good humour would also help.

best,
tony r (working as an agnostic analyst who admittedly preferred the IETF 
circa 1970-1992)

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2021 17:11:36 -0500

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 03:56:37PM -0400, Tony Rutkowski wrote:
> IETF remains stagnant.  Large numbers of academics flow in and out to mine
> ideas and advance their academic studies.  Few companies want to pursue
> anything there anymore except for a comparative handful trying to leverage a
> few more years and dollars out of legacy technologies.

Maybe we should close the IETF.  Those participants who think we should
close the general list might well agree with that.

> people who are apostates - has unfortunately been standard practice in the
> IETF in the past few decades.  If you reject the religious mandates of the
> IETF, you are declared "off topic," or fail to get a group started, or told
> to go elsewhere - often in abusive ways.  The intolerant behavior is
> especially difficult for those in many non-Western cultures.  These are the
> bigger problems of the IETF.

Yes.  For example, forming BTNS WG was painful in that way.  The new
DANISH mailing list might lead to a DANISH WG, and I expect it too would
run into bullying.  You should see the TLS DANE extension sturm und
drang of a couple of years ago -- it was awful, and it set everyone
involved back quite a bit.

And that's *tehcnical* disagreements.

What we see in this instance is that maxim that debate is all the more
acrimonious as the stakes go down.  Because... nothing will change if we
adopt a terminology BCP, we can and do argue the most strenuously about
it.  If draft-knodel-terminology were published, I'd be upset for
reasons I've given (most notably that casting aspersions on the
community is way over the line), but in fact nothing at all of note
would change, and world peace would be as elusive as ever.  It should
not be surprising then that this has been the most acrimonious debate at
IETF in a long time.

Maybe we should all just move to OASIS and pay to have our protocols
standardized without an IESG around and without much opposition because
anyone who thinks something should be done differently can pay to have
their variation standardized.

> tendency is to reject criticism - even when it is essential.  It seems worth
> not only maintaining a generic discourse list, but to encourage dissident
> and critical participation without dismissing commentarity as rhetorical and
> pile-on behavior.  Occasional good humour would also help.

Corporate and military organizations can do it, if they get lucky,
because all it takes is someone at the top with the right vision,
skills, and will power.  We're not such an organization.  We have egos
in the way.

Nico
--

---

From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 11:42:12 +1200

(Apologies for continuing the increasingly off-topic conversation but I need to respond to some points here)

Tony,

> On 10/04/2021, at 7:56 AM, Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Mark,
> 
> It was good to see a recognition that the IETF has a potentially significant antitrust exposure and willingness to increase the transparency mechanisms as a first step. 

I clearly read Mark's message very differently from you.

> The exposure here is not new.  The first major independent analysis of the topic occurred in 1994 by an external lawfirm.  I know, because I signed the check, and then signed for the liability insurance.  Over the years and especially during the past decade, almost all significant standards bodies individually and collectively have engaged in activities to diminish the exposure and develop related sets of organisational practices. 

The following two sentences are a significant misrepresentation of the true state of affairs.

> The IETF has been largely a non-participant outlier, ignoring the problems; although the relatively recent formation of the LLC and work of legal counsel have made some improvements.
> 
> The IETF has long been "easy pickings" for antitrust behaviors because of the lack of transparency and other organisational practices which enable the adoption of a IETF standards that enable a company to acquire significant market share for a product or service. 

For a correct picture please see https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-llc-statement-competition-law-issues/

The tl;dr is that the following characteristics of the IETF put us in a very strong position, quite different from many other organisations:

* IETF participation is free and open to all interested individuals. 
* Participants engage in their individual capacity, not as company representatives. 
* A wide range of perspectives is represented, reflecting interests from multiple industry sectors, academia, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), from around the globe. 
* IETF procedural rules, which include robust appeal options, are well-documented in public materials, and rigorously followed. 
* IETF activities are conducted with extreme transparency, in public forums. 
* Decision-making requires achieving broad consensus via these public processes. 
* IETF’s disclosure-focused intellectual property rights policies carefully and transparently balance the interests of standards contributors and standards adopters. 
* Fundamentally, “IETF participants use their best engineering judgment to find the best solution for the whole Internet, not just the best solution for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.”[RFC 7154]

This is not to say that more could be done, and it is true that in some cases there has been resistance to simple improvements, but that should not be confused with the overall position.

Jay

> I believe there was testimony in recent litigation that an IETF specification was worth about $4 million.  Continuing participation in the IETF is very costly and the number of participants attributed to a few specific companies or (as noted by Phil H-B, unattributed operatives) at meetings is a testament to beneficiaries.
> 
> The observation that the IETF's problems today extend well beyond anticompetitive behavior seems spot on.  The participant and work item metrics show that major contemporary specification development and engagement today have shifted rather massively to venues like 3GPP.  The IETF remains stagnant.  Large numbers of academics flow in and out to mine ideas and advance their academic studies.  Few companies want to pursue anything there anymore except for a comparative handful trying to leverage a few more years and dollars out of legacy technologies.
> 
> The tendencies in the IETF to be abusive and intolerant - especially to people who are apostates - has unfortunately been standard practice in the IETF in the past few decades.  If you reject the religious mandates of the IETF, you are declared "off topic," or fail to get a group started, or told to go elsewhere - often in abusive ways.  The intolerant behavior is especially difficult for those in many non-Western cultures.  These are the bigger problems of the IETF.
> 
> All organisations are largely incapable of analysing themselves and understanding their strengths and weakness in the larger ecosystem.  The tendency is to reject criticism - even when it is essential.  It seems worth not only maintaining a generic discourse list, but to encourage dissident and critical participation without dismissing commentarity as rhetorical and pile-on behavior.  Occasional good humour would also help.
> 
> best,
> tony r (working as an agnostic analyst who admittedly preferred the IETF circa 1970-1992)
> 
> 

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[email-masked]

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 00:25:02 -0400

To clarify, my concerns are not so much for direct IETF legal liability as
the risk of IETF work becoming one of the battle grounds in the
coming storm.

Until the pandemic, there was bipartisan interest in addressing 'the issue'
of 'big tech' in both the EU and US. 14 months later, Big Tech has only
gotten even bigger and more concentrated. I rather doubt the issue has been
forgotten by these people.

All I am really saying is don't say anything in a WG meeting that you would
not want repeated in front of a House Hearing.

Most folk who participate in IETF are not authorized to speak on behalf of
their company. I was the rare exception in that I was an official press
contact for VeriSign which since it was a public company at the time meant
I had to be aware of all sorts of legal requirements some of which had
serious consequences for saying the wrong thing. It would be well for a lot
of folk to bear in mind that the polite fiction we do not speak for our
employers is going to be roughly as effective as a firewall is in stopping
Internet breaches - it's not nothing but it isn't going to stop bullets or
congressional subpoenas.

On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 7:42 PM Jay Daley <[email-masked]> wrote:

> significant antitrust exposure and willingness to increase the transparency
> mechanisms as a first step.
>
>
> The exposure here is not new.  The first major independent analysis of the
> topic occurred in 1994 by an external lawfirm.  I know, because I signed
> the check, and then signed for the liability insurance.  Over the years and
> especially during the past decade, almost all significant standards bodies
> individually and collectively have engaged in activities to diminish the
> exposure and develop related sets of organisational practices.
>
>
> The IETF has been largely a non-participant outlier, ignoring the
> problems; although the relatively recent formation of the LLC and work of
> legal counsel have made some improvements.
>
> The IETF has long been "easy pickings" for antitrust behaviors because of
> the lack of transparency and other organisational practices which enable
> the adoption of a IETF standards that enable a company to acquire
> significant market share for a product or service.
>
>
> For a correct picture please see
> https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-llc-statement-competition-law-issues/
>
> The tl;dr is that the following characteristics of the IETF put us in a
> very strong position, quite different from many other organisations:
>
> * A wide range of perspectives is represented, reflecting interests from
> multiple industry sectors, academia, government and non-governmental
> organizations (NGOs), from around the globe.
> * IETF procedural rules, which include robust appeal options, are
> well-documented in public materials, and rigorously followed.
> * IETF’s disclosure-focused intellectual property rights policies
> carefully and transparently balance the interests of standards contributors
> and standards adopters.
> * Fundamentally, “IETF participants use their best engineering judgment to
> find the best solution for the whole Internet, not just the best solution
> for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.”[RFC 7154]
>
> This is not to say that more could be done, and it is true that in some
> cases there has been resistance to simple improvements, but that should not
> be confused with the overall position.
>
> Jay
>
> I believe there was testimony in recent litigation that an IETF
> specification was worth about $4 million.  Continuing participation in the
> IETF is very costly and the number of participants attributed to a few
> specific companies or (as noted by Phil H-B, unattributed operatives) at
> meetings is a testament to beneficiaries.
>
> anything there anymore except for a comparative handful trying to leverage
> a few more years and dollars out of legacy technologies.
>

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 14:21:33 -0400

Hi Nico,

There is actually effective solace in many if not most industry 
standards bodies today where those with a common interest and 
collaborative style do well - frequently embellished with good wine and 
food.  Courtesy of Google Patents, however, we can all see that the 
world of standards bodies is surrounded by the vast "dark matter" of 
proprietary standards threaded through vendor products and services.  
Only some of the IPR makes it into industry bodies to advance market 
strategies.  All standards bodies tend to persist in the delusion of 
being in control of some perceived turf.

Over the past 45 years, I've been in most of them - mapping and 
analyzing them, and pushing occasional work here and there.  They all 
have their own proclivities.  Some like the ISO or ATIS, I still disdain 
and eschew for multiple detractions - not the least of which is selling 
off someone else's IPR as standards. Hopefully, Karl Malamud will 
prevail in his EUCOJ litigation.

The IETF in the 80s and early 90s had hope, but became a cult with 
religious views - propped up by entities who earn massive revenues from 
what was once called Silicon Snake Oil.  It was always amazing how 
pushing bits around was turned into a religion and community, only to 
ultimately burp out alt-universe wonders like QAnon.  There is life on 
the outside.

Enuf said....

cheers, tony

---

From: Rob Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 20:13:22 -0700

>> need to respond to some points here)
This conversation does appear to be off-topic. What kind of new work is
being proposed? From the charter:

Options for handling new work include:
- Directing the work to an existing WG.
- Developing a proposal for a BOF.
- Developing a charter for a new WG.
- Making recommendations that documents be AD-sponsored (which ADs may or
may not choose to follow).
- Requesting that the the IESG or the IETF LLC consider taking up the work.
- Deferring the decision for the new work.
- Rejecting the new work.

thanks,
Rob

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 05:52:51 -0400

On 4/10/21 11:13 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 9:25 PM Phillip Hallam-Baker 
> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     To clarify, my concerns are not so much for direct IETF legal
>     liability as the risk of IETF work becoming one of the battle
>     grounds in the coming storm.
>
>     On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 7:42 PM Jay Daley <[email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>         (Apologies for continuing the increasingly off-topic
>         conversation but I need to respond to some points here)
>
>
> This conversation does appear to be off-topic. What kind of new work 
> is being proposed? From the charter:
>
> - Making recommendations that documents be AD-sponsored (which ADs may 
> or may not choose to follow).

And this is the problem with gendispatch in a nutshell - its focus is 
restricted to things for which a new WG or document actually make sense, 
and the range of problems in the "general" area of IETF are much broader 
than that.   Meanwhile, gendispatch is the latest in many efforts to DoS 
the IETF list where general discussion used to take place.

Keith

---

From: Andrew Campling <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2021 21:19:28 +0000

> * Fundamentally, “IETF participants use their best engineering judgment to find the best solution for the whole Internet, not just the best solution for any particular network, technology, vendor,…

Whilst I tend to agree with much of the post that the above list is extracted from, I question the third bullet point (“A wide range of perspectives is represented, reflecting interests from multiple industry sectors, academia, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), from around the globe).  Many of the discussions that I’ve participated in are dominated by engineers from a relatively small set of tech companies, with little or no representation from industry sectors – indeed in many cases, there is also relatively limited participation from tech company engineers with a deep knowledge of markets outside of North America.  Government, academia and NGO participation is pretty limited in those discussions too.

Is this a problem?  Well, it does mean that the diversity of thought is far more restricted than it should be and it leads to situations where proposals are advanced to do things where the proponents are either unaware or uninterested in the real world operational impacts of their actions.  It could be argued that some of these discussions would be of direct commercial benefit to one or more tech companies even though the same activities would, at the very least, inconvenience a great many other organisations.

Whether this situation amounts to any form of exposure to antitrust-related challenges for either the IETF or its participants is a matter for others to judge.  Irrespective of that, however, it does seem to me to be something that needs to be addressed if meaningful progress is to be made both with diversity and with bringing RFC 8890 to life.

Andrew