A current Last Call has apparently brought on another of the "please tell all your friends to send in supportive notes, even if they don't say much of anything substantive" campaigns that we see from time to time. When those notes come from people who do not routinely participate on IETF lists, they provide very little real information unless we have suddenly taken up voting or otherwise counting notes. Whatever we might otherwise think of company positions, a note that said "I work for <xyz> and we need this and intend to implement and deploy it" would be real information that the community could consider where "I am an individual and +1" does not. Sadly, such endorsements, especially from people who are not active IETF participants, add to the noise and might prevent someone who was still genuinely trying to understand the pros and cons (presumably including all of the IESG) from seeing a new and substantive argument, no matter how well-grounded.
I note that there are some folks in the community who seem to favor these campaigns when they like the cause and not if they do not. But I wonder whether, in the interest of noise reduction and/or support of our "no voting, even by active participants" position, there be any sympathy for a Godwin-like rule that the first appearance of many no-information "I support this" endorsements from people and constituencies who are not regular participants on the IETF list should immediately trigger a state in which all further statements from that "side" would be ignored or would end the discussion entirely? Yes, I see the difficulties in figuring out the details of such a rule and implementing it and am mostly joking. Mostly. john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf