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Re: Showing support during IETF LC...

2013-02-25 14:51:32
Hi, Jari.

On Feb 25, 2013, at 9:03 PM, Jari Arkko <jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> 
wrote:

Agree with what John, Brian, and others have said. FWIW, at times - 
particularly with documents having some controversy - the ADs are left 
wondering what the silent majority is thinking. So in some cases the private 
messages to the AD in question or to the IESG are helpful. And while "+1" is 
usually bad form, indicating that you've done a thorough review and found no 
issues is appreciated. (Or better yet, that you intend to put this technology 
into your own use.)

Finding issues is one goal of LC. So to go back to Warren's example of 
draft-ietf-foo-dangerous-orangutangs, there of course is room for comments 
about why they spelled it Orangutan in the title, but Orangutang (with a g) in 
the abstract. And of course there's room for comments about why section 2 does 
not explain why DNSSEC would not protect web users from Orangutan(g)s.

But LC comments can also be about whether or not this is something that should 
be done at all. Maybe some believe that the IETF should not be dealing with 
Orangutans at all because we have already standardized on chimps. Or maybe ACME 
corporation has IPR on Orangutans and we should not deal with them. There can 
even be a comment saying that nobody needs this and nobody's going to implement 
this (OK, the ape example kind of fails here).

It's because of this last kind of comment that we need to show support. "I 
think this is a good document" is not a helpful comment. "I think this document 
will be useful for people implementing routing protocols" is. And if we get 
some +1's on that comment especially from people who know about routing, this 
is useful. In this case we shouldn't be looking for consensus, or rather not 
just for consensus. We also need a community of people who need this document. 
And some explanations as to why this is a good idea, along with some +1s is an 
OK way to determine that there is a community.

Yoav