John,
On Wed, 2010-01-06 at 17:13 -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
I am extremely concerned about getting into a situation in which
the IETF spends time debating issues that are basically
minutiae, designing (or fine-tuning) procedures or naming
schemes in a committee of a few thousand.
*Getting* into a situation? The IETF spends a great deal of its time in
such activities, and has at least for the last 10 years or so (there may
have been a "golden age" before that, although it seems unlikely to me).
I think the reality is that there are certain technical issues that:
1. Are simple enough that everyone can understand them
2. Have no completely obvious solution
These issues invite long, pointless threads discussing them.
Things that require a lot of time to understand the details tend to only
have a small handful of experts who discuss them, because there aren't
that many people who have the time and/or motivation to get up to speed.
Things that have a clear solution tend to only have a few net kooks who
argue (loudly, repeatedly, rudely) against this solution.
I think a number of process and other efforts have been made over the
decades to try to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of IETF discussions.
I don't know how successful these have been - perhaps the IAB has
metrics on this? I have no further proposals, except perhaps less
wringing of hands over the fact that we seemly waste a lot of time
arguing over not-so-important stuff.
Oh, and we might also remind people who have drafts caught up in a
vortex of endless nitpicking that it's not their fault, and there is
nothing wrong with their drafts. (Good luck Joe!) :)
--
Shane
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