On Feb 12, 2014, at 6:26 AM, <l(_dot_)wood(_at_)surrey(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk> wrote:
Starting an idea in the meeting privileges only those who are in the room.
It is more complicated than that…
We like to act/think/talk as though "the people in the room" are a meaningful
subset of "the people on the mailing list", and therefore are aware of the
discussion on the list and can make tentative decisions that are representative
of the list (to be confirmed on the list later). The fact is that many of the
people in the room at an IETF meeting are not even subscribed to the mailing
list, and many of the people who are subscribed to our mailing lists do not
read them. There is also the fact that only a tiny number of people in the
room have looked at the agenda for this meeting beforehand, and even fewer have
read the drafts on the agenda.
In some other standards organizations, there are no (or fewer) big plenary
meetings, and the meetings of each WG (in person or via telechat) are planned
on the list and consist of only those people who are most active in the work
year-round. In those organizations, it is possible for the people in the room
(or on the call) to reach some consensus that is likely to be representative of
the list, and then say "Of course Bob and Dave aren't here, so we better run
this by the list to make sure that we really have consensus."
That's what the rules of the IETF read like, but in reality the group of people
in the room is almost entirely disjoint from the group of people on the list,
and in many WGs, _all_ of the most important decisions have been made in a
meeting room at an IETF plenary meeting (and merely "confirmed" on the list)
for many years. In other words, most of our work is _not_ done on the mailing
lists, or even by people who are reading most of the messages that are sent to
those lists.
For instance, in many working groups, virtually all new WG work items are
adopted via a consensus call in a face-to-face meeting, and a WG chair may
declare "lack of interest" if only 5% of the people in the room show interest
in something, even if those 5% represent 90% of the people who have read the
work in question, and 80% of the people who have read even a single message on
the WG's mailing list in the last year. So, we have created a situation in
which it is usually necessary to present a compelling overview of your work to
a room full of people who have never read your work and are not actively
participating in the WG mailing list, in order to get your work adopted by an
IETF WG.
That stinks, but if we want to change it, we need to _do something to change
it_. It does not help to keep stating an untruth as if it were the truth.
There are some IETF WGs that operate differently. They do their work on the
mailing lists and have "interim" meetings or telechats as needed that are
organized on their WG mailing list. Some of them don't even meet at IETF
meetings, because they see no value in presenting their work-in-progress to the
masses. It would have an unfortunate impact on our revenue stream if more
groups started operating that way, as our main sources of income are tied to
attendance at plenary meetings, but maybe more groups should try this sort of
thing, anyway?
Does anyone have any other ideas about how we can get back to a point where
most of our decisions are made by people who are active on the WG mailing list
and interested in the work of the group year-round?
Margaret