On Nov 12, 2012, at 2:24 PM, Riccardo Bernardini wrote:
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson
<swmike(_at_)swm(_dot_)pp(_dot_)se> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
For WGs that do *not* have a low bar for entry, a detailed complaint to
the chairs and the AD would be very appropriate (and probably more effective
than a rant on this list).
Well, it's hard to say what caused an email I sent (new thread, pitching
idea, asking if it was relevant to the WG) to not get responded to.
Perhaps it was irrelevant or uninteresting but nobody wanted to say so. I
don't know, if I don't get a response, I tend not to push the issue.
I can add another (likely) reason: low S/N ratio in everyone's
mailbox. It happened to me too: I see an e-mail, I think it is
interesting and that I should reply, the reply is not just a
one-line-email and it requires so thought, so I say "I'll reply
later," I get drowned under a ton of other mails and I forget about
this one... It should not happen, I agree, but it does…
One way to get better responses is a targeted message. A message to a busy
working group's list with "hey, I've had this idea. What do y'all think?" is
likely to be ignored by most if they weren't prepared for it. A message to
Jack saying "Hey, Jack, what do you think of this?" is much more likely to get
a response, and a draft you're co-authoring with "Jack" might get more
attention than a draft you're authoring by yourself, assuming that you are
either unknown or barely-known, and "Jack" is a pillar of the community.
That's one of the reasons to go to meetings. You get to know the "Jack"s
personally, so that you can feel comfortable asking them directly for review of
your ideas. If you don't have that, a good second-best is to send this directly
to a working group chair. They will feel more obliged to answer than a random
Jack, they know the "Jack"s (or they're not doing their job), and they can
introduce you and your idea better to both the group and the appropriate "Jack".
You could say that if the message had enough interest for me, I would
have replied at once and I can agree with that. The matter is that
"interesting" is somehow in between "totally boring" and
"life-or-death matter," so that an e-mail can have some interest and
still remains unresponded too.
It takes a lot of thinking and some careful reading to decide if you're really
interested. We don't have time to do that for every intriguing message on the
mailing list.
About my strictly personal experience of the entry bar in IETF, I must
say that when I went to Maastricht I was really impressed how I felt
"welcomed" and part of the group, while carrying the red label of the
rookie :-).
( BTW, part of my "welcomed" feeling was due also to the "reception
for new attendants" and the "crash courses" for newcomers given the
first day [suggestion for potential newcomers: go to that courses, it
is worth it] )
I had my fair share of interaction (I am quite shy a guy, so it is not
really in my nature to jump for the mike at every occasion) without
feeling a "second class citizen" because of my newcomer status.
However, this was *my* personal experience and your mileage may vary.
Maybe if someone else interacts with people less friendly than the one
I interacted with, they could experience a different situation.
Yeah, me too. My first IETF meeting I went to the mike only once. You get used
to it, and with time, you build a reputation. You can build a reputation with
only the mailing list. You can even make the necessary social ties by
participating in the mailing list, but that's considerably harder.
Yoav