> From: Jari Arkko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > First, I tend to find tourists and MFLD rather harmless. > In fact, I think they are good for our financing. Some > might say necessary. And they usually stay out of the mike, > don't disturb presentations, and don't comment on the mailing > list where the real consensus is verified. But if some of > them do, that's even better - then we have attracted new > contributors. And we DO need new contributors.
>From my perspective as someone with a decades long perfect non-attendance record at the IETF parties, I think that is wrong on all counts. There are WGs that exist only because it is the go-ers who feel the greatest need to prove to the folks back at the factory or to the readers of their trade rag inter-ad filler that their contributions to the Standards Process are vital to peace, prosperity, and the continued existence of the Internet. But then I have the archaic and obsolete notion that the IETF needs good and useful standards more than it needs contributors. > In short, I wouldn't worry too much about the touristy nature > of a location. Judging purely from good and bad results in the WG mailing lists, I think that is right and wrong. Venues that are too hard to reach are attended by only the most dedicated and so produce agreements that do not reflect the consensus of the WG mailing list; recall the "agreement" to pick the ISO OSI Protocol Suite as IPng. Venues that are extremely popular also produce bogus agreements by not drawing a representative sample of the WG as defined by the mailing list, albeit not quite as bad. If had been asked years ago, I'd have said the IETF WG meetings should be abolished in favor of the WG mailing lists supplemented by ad hoc telephone calls among at most 2-4 people to hammer out the relatively few issues that need "high bandwidth." I've no doubt that administrative groups such as the IAB and IESG need real meetings, but in decades of watching WGs, I cannot think of single case where an IETF WG meeting was necessary. Judging from the effects on documents I've watched but often not contributed to, WG meetings have only neutral or negative effects. Good specifications require thinking and understanding. The heat of battle in a conference room or any meeting of more than 3 or 4 essentially always precludes anything that might honestly be called deliberation. This is true even when you have 3 or 4 people playing to a silent audience. Abolishing the WG meetings would also end the silly political correctness games in the choice of venues. Of course, I don't expect anything of the sort to happen. The opposite of ever more emphasis on meetings and the form of the IETF and less on useful protocol specifications will continue. The IETF of 10 years ago would not have spent a fraction as much time writing RFCs about accounting and job descriptions as it has in recent months. Such stuff would have been flatly inconceivable for the IETF of the 1980s. However, it's best to acknowledge and deal with such irresistible changes. They're the stuff of life and death. Vernon Schryver [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
