Patrick,
I want to thank you for your detailed and thorough comments.
First let me say that this working group has a small set of active
participants, less than 10 at most and less than 5 on average. So,
you’re not in a minority since every voice is quite important to this
working group.
Second, the chairs agree with all of your comments. However, we also
believe that the process we’re proposing will achieve the same goals
you are seeking to achieve. We’re just choosing to do it with less
structure and formality, or perhaps different structure.
Every document in this group gets traction from one person, the author.
Almost no document in this group gets traction from any kind of
majority, i.e., only a few people are interested. For example, the
“fees” document got a lot of attention and a lot of support. This
is rare in this group. The “org” documents got a lot of attention
because there were concerns. When the concerns got addressed people
didn’t support the documents so much as they just didn’t object. So
it goes with most documents in this group.
We do not expect everyone to read 20+ documents and pick the 5
“best” on their merits. What we expect is everyone to simply select
the 1-5 documents they happen to care about.
With that information the Chairs will consider many of the other
criteria you mention to break what will no doubt be many ties in the
selection process, and propose priorities for document adoption to the
working group based on our assessment.
We could be wrong but it seems like the process we’re proposing is
well-suited to the make-up of this working group. If it fails then
we’ll just try something else.
Thanks again for your attention!
Jim
On 11 Dec 2018, at 2:44, Patrick Mevzek wrote:
Hello,
Sorry to be probably again in the minority and the dissonant voice
here, but I do not understand this:
On Fri, Dec 7, 2018, at 10:49, James Galvin wrote:
The purpose of the list was to include everything that exists or that
has passed through the working group. I have to admit it was more
than
I expected when we created the list.
In any case, the right thing to do is simply not vote for any
document
you do not want to move forward.
To me, this process feel completely backwards :-(
As described, it makes sense to me if:
- we have a wide community of people
- with far enough time on their hands
- to read ~20 technical documents
- compare their merits
- and finally select 5 to "promote" to push to the working group
- of course all in some specific tight deadline.
I believe we are absolutely in the opposite case and I fear the
outcome of this process will not have the expected results.
First, I think the burden should be on the authors to at least present
the document on the list (which is not even the case for some of
them), in order to convince people that there is indeed a problem to
solve (first important point) and that their solution or beginning of
a solution makes sense. If their arguments are clear and correct,
people would then be enthousiastic to add them as working group
elements and work on them.
Instead by just trying to be exhaustive and let people choose among
everything you achieve two things:
- you show each document as similar to others in term of usefulness
that is maturity, scope of the problem, precise solution to it, etc.
(and they are obviously not all equal on these points)
- you accept that documents are basically worked on elsewhere, never
discussed here, and coming late (which means it may be more difficult
to work, as a group, on them because many design choices would already
be set in stone by then). Which has to me the very unfortunate result
that the working group just becomes an IETF stamp for an EPP
extension.
Even if the same people as here are working on the document elsewhere
before presenting it here, what is then the value or added value of
this working group, if it is basically just to make sure it fits an
RFC structure, follows all guidelines, register what needs to be
registered at IANA, etc. which is basically no more an engineering
task but merely an editorial one?
This is not the only reason but I think this also explains in the very
low participation we see and the difficulty to find editors,
shepherds, etc. (and of course it is a vicious circle as the low
participation here could be taken by some as an indication that they
should work on their documents elsewhere to make progress).
Second, beside authors of course which are already motivated to do so,
anyone may be free to promote or vote on any document of couse to be a
working group document, but what would that mean (for the working
group and the specific documents)?
Instead, why not do like it is done in other working groups and ask
people to speak for a document **if and only if** they kind of
informally pledge to work on it in some way which may mean:
- reading it, and the future other versions
- being at least able to assess if the document is good enough to go
to WGLC for example
and/or to summarize it broadly (problem to be solved, strong points of
the solution offered, points remaining to discuss, other options)
- provide feedback, if possible, at various levels (either just
alternate ideas or specific detailed implementation point to work on,
etc.)
- act as an editor (non-technical feedback)
- pledge or express strong interest into implementating it or putting
enough energy to convince a third party to implement it
- identify that it may be related to some other kind of document (in
this working group or not), or that other actors may already have
solved the same problem or working on it, etc. and trying to liaise
between everyone
- etc. (there are many ways to participate, sometimes just sending
emails to the authors to ask where they are at, what is blocking, etc.
can give the authors a boost of motivation - seeing that others care
too about the document - to work further on it)
This would also clearly show interest for it: if people are saying
"yes, I agree to spend some of my time making sure this documents
advance as an IETF document" then it proves real usefulness and
support by the "community" for it. A very useful information to be
added later on in the shepherd write-up ;-)
Also the discussion started already previously (but did not go very
far I think) and I think we (I) suggested already that having an
Implementation Section or at least clear intentions to work on
implementations or asking others to work on some could be used, among
other factors, as a basis to see if a document should be considered by
the working group or not.
To be honest right now I prefer to devote the little personal time I
have to try implementing some of the documents that I find interesting
(as implementing them raise all sorts of feedback) instead of reading
completely external documents and then compare all of them together
while not be sure to even look at some of them again in the future.
Which is why I won't vote for any document right now because some are
not passing the preconditions I listed and for others I can not
guarantee working on them at any level so I believe my vote to be kind
of worthless for the working group.
But that is just me so if the process above works for everyone as is,
do not loose time trying to convince me, it is not very important, and
I can always comment later on the documents I would have time to work
on.
--
Patrick Mevzek
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