--On Saturday, August 03, 2013 08:55 +0200 "Olle E. Johansson"
<oej(_at_)edvina(_dot_)net> wrote:
...
Just a note for the future. I think we should allow
anonymous listeners, but should they really be allowed to
participate?
We don't allow anonymous comments at the microphone in
face-to-face meetings, requiring all people to clearly state
their names and have those names recorded in the meeting
minutes and in the Jabber log. I don't see why we would
change this for remote participants.
...
(moving to ietf mailing list)
Absolutely.
Now, should we add an automatic message when someone joins the
chat rooms, or a message when meetings begin that all comments
made in the chat room is also participation under the note
well?
Ole,
First, probably to the "when meetings begin" part, but noting
that someone who gets onto the audio a few minutes late is in
exactly the same situation as someone who walks into the meeting
room a few minutes late -- announcements at the beginning of the
session are ineffective.
But, more generally...
I've said some of this in other contexts but, as a periodic
remote attendee, including being remote for IETF 87, I'd support
a more radical proposal, for example:
We regularize remote participation [1] a bit by doing the
following. At some level, if remote participants expect to be
treated as serious members of the community, they (we) can
reasonably be expected to behave that way.
* A mechanism for remote participants should be set up
and remote participants should be to register. The
registration procedure should include the Note Well and
any other announcement the IETF Trust, IAOC, or IESG
consider necessary (just like the registration procedure
for f2f attendance).
* In the hope of increased equity, lowered overall
registration fees, and consequently more access to IETF
participation by a broader and more diverse community,
the IAOC should establish a target/ recommended
registration fee for remote participants. That fee
should reflect the portion of the registration fee that
is not specifically associated with meeting expenses
(i.e., I don't believe that remote participants should
be supporting anyone's cookies other than their own).
* In the interest of maximum participation and inclusion
of people are aren't attending f2f for economic reasons,
I think we should treat the registration fee as
voluntary, with people contributing all or part of it as
they consider possible. No questions asked and no
special waiver procedures. On the other hand,
participation without registration should be considered
as being in extremely bad taste or worse, on a par with
violations of the IPR disclosure rules.
* I don't see a practical and non-obtrusive way to
enforce registration, i.e., preventing anyone
unregistered from speaking, modulo the "bad taste"
comment above. But we rarely inspect badges before
letting people stand in a microphone line either.
In return, the IETF generally (and particularly people in the
room) needs to commit to a level of seriousness about remote
participation that has not consistently been in evidence. In
particular:
* Remote participants should have as much access to mic
lines and the ability to participate in discussions as
those who are present in the room. That includes
recognizing that, if there is an audio lag and it takes
a few moments to type in a question or comment, some
flexibility about "the comment queue is closed" may have
to be in order. For some sessions, it might require
doing what ICANN has started doing (at least sometimes),
which is treating the remote participants as a separate
mic queue rather than expecting the Jabber scribe (or
remote participant messenger/ channeler) to get at the
end of whatever line is most convenient.
* It is really, really, important that those speaking,
even if they happen to be sitting at the chair's table,
clearly and carefully identify themselves. Last week,
there were a few rooms in which the audio was, to put it
very politely, a little marginal. That happens. But,
when it combines with people mumbling their names or
saying them very quickly, the result is as little
speaker identification as would have been the case if
the name hadn't been used as all. In addition, some of
us suffer from the disability of not being able to keep
track of unfamiliar voices while juggling a few decks of
slides, a jabber session, audio, and so on. "I
identified myself 10 minutes ago" is not generally
adequate.
* On several occasions this week, slides were uploaded
on a just-in-time basis (or an hour or so after that).
The problem was aggravated by the meeting materials and
tools agenda pages apparently either lacking "Expires"
headers or having them set rather long as compared to
in-meeting changes. It seems to me that, if the IETF is
serious about remote participation, pages that reflect
very volatile material should have "expires" headers set
to appropriately short intervals sometimes Sunday and be
left that way until the end of the last session on
Friday _and_ that it be clearly explained to people
whose comments depend on visual materials that failure
to get those materials uploaded before the meeting
(except in the most unusual of situations) are badly
hurting the IETF's ability to be open and inclusive.
The only alternative I can think of to getting really
serious about having material uploaded early is to have
a high-reliability and decent resolution video feed of
the slides or the screen on which they are being
projected. And that might still be inadequate for some
remote participants.
Or we can decide that real participation in the IETF requires
that people be in the room, that remote participants are
involved on a "what you get is what you get" basis, and we stop
pretending otherwise. For many reasons, I'm not enthused about
that idea, but the things that I, and others, are suggesting and
asking for will cost money and require some changes in the
ordinary way of doing things and it is only fair to mention the
alternative and suggest that it be explicitly considered.
best,
john
[1] I do mean "participants" here. I really don't care what the
lurkers do, or how anonymous they are as long as they remain
lurkers. I object to anonymous participation in any standards
process, including the IETF one, for reasons that have been
discussed repeatedly on this list.