On Oct 14, 2004, at 8:26 AM, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:The IETF has not been working. The singles biggest point ofdifferenceis the lack of con calls.Predictions about the demise of the IETF are almost as old as the predictions about the demise of the Internet.
The Mayans predicted the imminent collapse of their civilization for 300 years, turned out they were right, it collapsed in about 600 CE.
Instead of telephone conferences we can do regular jabber sessions which is typical way its done at IETF WGs.If somebody is willing to host a conference call, I see no reason why it shouldn't be tried at least to see if it a valuable means to conduct business. If they turn out to be problem, so be it.
We will never know unless we try.
The jabber sessions failled, they amplified differences. The point of the telephone confereces is that people are less likely to make personal flames on the list if they speak to them regularly.This is totally untrue. The Jabber sessions worked well. We never once had a flame war and for the most part participants got a lot done. If there is one thing that was wrong with the Jabber sessions, it is that they were too short. Many people wanted to stay around and work for much longer than 1 hour.
My concern was not jabber flame wars, but on list flame wars and endless recycling of the same issues. I don't beleive Doug Otis ever felt that the points he kept trying to raise had been taken account of by the group. If he had been able to present them for ten mins in a con call and we had discussed them for 20 mins or so he might have realized that he had been heard. Its all about active listening. The email format does not really encourage people to communicate in ways that demonstrate that they have listened to the other side. Comments interspersed in email messages don't work the same way as providing a restatement as you are forced to in a dialogue.
Are we going to copy the MARID approach that failed or are we going to apply an approach that regularly succeeds?I'm advocate of not repeating the mistakes of MARID. And so far, I'm convinced this group is on that same rough path: not giving itself enough time and attempting to sweep major functional disagreements under the rug.
I think that we have an even bigger problem than MARID. In that case there was a solution already deployed with grassroots support. Occam's razor could at least come down on the side of the status quo. Every time I have seen a group start with the premise that there is not enough time to do a proper job we have ended up taking longer by ignoring the issues. I think the statement 'there is not enough time to consider that' is really simply an agenda denial move rather than a legitimate argument. When I am hearing people say that we should re-invent technologies that have already been through standards process and are deployed because there is not time to consider them I get suspicious.
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature