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Re: [Asrg] 0. General - ASRG Direction - PLEASE READ
2003-09-25 18:35:36
John Fenley wrote:
From: "Yakov Shafranovich" <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>
To ASRG Group Members,
We need volunteers urgently and they have not been forthcoming.
> …
>> We have over 600 subscribers with only a small amount participating,
where are the others?!?!?!
> …
>> The purpose of the ASRG is to find solutions to spam.
> …
>> While talking on the mailing list in some way leads to that goal and
the archive does touch on every aspect of spam, results are what
counts not the chatter.
>
Perhaps we should have a meeting as is mentioned on the website.
We could set aside one day to really get down and dirty on each of the
projects at hand.
Face to face communication is often a good way of getting ideas together.
"Meetings
The ASRG meetings will be held 2-3 times a year generally concurrent
with IETF meetings and possibly concurrent with other conferences."
The next IETF meeting is November 9-14 in Minneapolis, MN, USA
This seems like a perfect opportunity to gather and discuss.
I don't know how many people are planning on going and due to today's
economic climate how many companies are willing to pay for it. I think
it would be best if group members give some feedback on the idea of
having a meeting at the next IETF so we can gauge better whether there
will be enough participants. An alternative might be a meeting at a
different location, or perhaps a teleconference. Some form of an online
chat might work as well, but I am not sure it it will be as good as a
real meeting.
Another solution might be to make the documents available for editing
with version changes being tracked, that way anyone can contribute to
the documents without first having to become a "volunteer" in order to
add something.
There are a few different systems that allow this. I believe that a wiki
can do this, and could be a solution.
We are looking at some systems on this. If you can, provide some more
information off or on-list.
...
More is needed - we need volunteers, people who are willing to give of
their time to get down, get dirty and produce results.
...
It is very sad to see that the two foundational documents for the
group, the requirements document and the technical considerations
document, got three and one response respectively. The spam
bibliography guidelines had zero response. This is considering that
the mailing list has over 600 subscribers ((plus uncounted numbers who
read the web and gmane archives) but at any given time at most only 30
are active! That constitutes less than 10% of the entire membership!
What about the other 90%?!?!?!?
Perhaps when there are so many willing, but so few participating it is
time to re-evaluate the methods for allowing them to contribute.
Personally I thought I was volunteering by reading and discussing ideas
on this list. I use my own time, and I do not get paid. What I do get is
berated for not volunteering.
I think of this group as a virtual think tank.
To me, increasing meaningful understanding is the goal.
Understanding is about bouncing ideas back and forth. In a climate that
demands results of specific "volunteers" it is obvious why so few have
stepped forward to that responsibility.
It is a think tank definatly, but we need a way to somehow produce or
present results. List comments are good IF we have the volunteers to
capture the results. Since everything is archived, we can get that later
but it would be a much harder task for them. At this point, I would like
to encourage people to comment more on the posts that interest them and
not be afraid to speak out.
We need to move the group forward. While jumping straight to proposals
may seem very good to many, we cannot do that.
It seems good because each of us has an agenda, and each of us wants to
be the one that comes up with the solution.
(or I could be different)
Many proposals would benefit from working in concert with other
proposals, but someone has to think that through. Many times people have
been pushing their pet proposals without considering its impact or how
to fit it in with other proposals.
We seek to understand and analyze the spam problem, before we can hope
to objectively evaluate proposals. That is why we need to focus on the
foundation of the group which includes inventory of problems,
requirements, evaluation model, consent framework, technical
considerations document, analysis, bibliography, survey of solutions,
identification of standardization requirements, etc. All of these
things either do not have volunteers or are not getting very little
feedback from the group members. Without a solid foundation for the
group we cannot hope to be able to evaluate any proposals objectively
and consider its impact on the Internet.
Perhaps the various documents could benefit from gedanken experiments
using the solutions people want to present.
This group has already generated a huge number of messages of this sort.
This could be a format:
Here is idea for evaluation.
Oooh here's a problem with that.
Problem is restated in a general form and added to it's respective
document.
Problem is applied to all previous ideas to see how this new knowledge
effects it.
In this way as much meaning as possible comes from our talk without
forcing it.
Ok, the problem is that in many areas there aren't people who are
capturing the results of the discussions. While the foundational
documents have authors, many other topics do not have anyone in
particular working on producing a document or capturing the useful
comments on the list.
There are many things that can be done but without volunteers we
cannot do them. These include:
o Volunteering to lead or participate an area
Obviously volunteering can't be done without volunteers.
o Editing and reviewing documents
o Simply participating in the list discussions on foundational documents
o Proposing suggestions to improve the group
These are all easily done without official "volunteers" given a proper
framework.
Let me explain myself - there are two things that we are looking for -
one is simply people commenting on the list. Two, people volunteering to
do things. I would like to see a large number of people commenting with
various volunteers "capturing" and publishing those as results. Since
everything is archived, "specific volunteers" can come later.
Just to sum up:
I think we should all meet at the IETF meeting.
Lets hear from others.
Perhaps a collaborative document solution could help the various
documents move forward better.
Lets get some input on that, we are looking at that already. I am not
familiar with Wikis, so if you can enlight me, please.
I feel that to demand specific volunteers alienates 99% of this list.
Commenting on different things would help and I will tone down my demands :)
We need a way for list volume to be made useful.
GOOD point - this has been discussed many times. What is the best way to
do that - perhaps we should split the list, or maybe other approaches?
We are all volunteers already. This is a noble cause, and I know that we
are all doing our best.
Definatly and I am sorry guys if I came across too harsh.
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