Peter,
I may have more to say about the general topic in a more
comprehensive note but I think your comment calls for a
challenge to the community and the IESG.
--On Saturday, July 31, 2010 05:00 -0600 Peter Saint-Andre
<stpeter(_at_)stpeter(_dot_)im> wrote:
"participate" is too strong a word. Scheduled-but-ad-hoc BoFs
now have the same unfortunate properties of many WGs, namely
that 80+% of the people there are only there to listen, not
help.
Double bingo. The number of WG sessions (which are ostensibly
scheduled for the purpose of "working") in which folks have
not read the drafts or otherwise prepared themselves to
actively contribute is also distressingly high. Perhaps we all
simply have too much work to do, or perhaps many drafts are
written in such a way that folks can't easily grok the problem
and its proposed solution. Regarding the latter, one of the
WGs I advise held a small "tutorial" session in a side room on
Friday morning and that turned out to be quite useful because
it forced some of the key contributors (in this case the
chairs) to clearly explain the core concepts behind the
protocol under development within the WG, and I think that
effort will pay off in the form of a much clearer and more
readable specification.
I think that, in theory, the IESG has the ability to "solve"
many of these problems by adopting a management doctrine that
groups get meeting resources only if they can justify them on
the basis of posted drafts and active discussion of those drafts
on mailing lists. The IESG should retain the ability to be
flexible when appropriate, but "no activity on that topic"
should imply "no agenda time" and "no drafts or other activity"
should imply "no meeting slot"... whether we are talking about
WGs, formal BOFs, or various informal activities that require
IETF meeting resources. I recognize the advantages of tutorials
too, but they should be identified as such and should be very
few within the life cycle of a WG (or WG organizing process).
The challenge to the community is that, each time something like
this has been suggested to the IESG in recent years, the
response has been either "but the community really wants all of
those meetings and we have to do what they are telling us" or
"lots of people are willing to have more restrictions on
meetings as long as the meetings they are interested in are not
affected". I fear that both of those responses are correct.
So, if we actually want to turn this around, we need to convince
the IESG that there really is significant community support for
more aggressive management of WGs and meetings. If that support
actually does not exist, maybe discussions like this one are,
themselves, a waste of time and resources.
john
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