I agree with Brian on the important outcome of having everyone be able
to watch the mailstorm, but there are other ways to accomplish the same
task:
- We could have a separate lastcalls(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org list that only had last
calls. That would eliminate side discussions about IANA transitions and
the importance of cookies.
- We could have each Last Call announced on ietf-announce with a
specific list, say, <draftname>-lastcall(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org, for Last Call
comments on that particular. We could make lastcalls(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org a
read-only list that would get a copy of everything to
<draftname>-lastcall(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org. That way, it would be straightforward to
separate the threads for the different Last Calls (and have the chair or
AD who is running the Last Call lead their particular discussion), but
still allow everyone to see the mailstorm if they subscribed to
lastcalls(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org.
We've got to decide what we want to accomplish out of this task (as was
mentioned in several ways last night) and lay out the different
side-effects of changing how we do things. Back in the day, I thought it
a perfectly sane move to separate the regular ietf-announce list from
the i-d-announce list. Perhaps separating out Last Calls (with different
possible variants, examples above) makes sense too.
I did hear last night, as I've been hearing for a long time, that
*something* not-so-good is going on, and that we should at least
consider the changes we might make *and* consider side-effects of such
changes before we make them. We obviously shouldn't try to engineer on
this list every last detail of how things might work, but general ideas
about how we might arrange things and comments like Brian's about
possible bad side-effects are exactly what we need to be thinking about.
pr
On 7/24/14 12:51 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
I'm going to be contrarian.
I think ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org is *exactly* what we want for IETF last
calls. Most last calls are silent. Some trigger a small,
non-annoying amount of technical discussion. The remaining
ones cause mailstorms. Those are exactly the ones I, as an
IETF citizen, want to know about. They tell me that the IETF
is about to do something controversial, and I need to have
a careful look to see if I care. If I decide that I don't care,
it's trivial to ignore the thread.
This essential feature would be lost if the last call traffic
was hidden in some place dedicated to the particular draft;
I'd never be aware that there was a controversy.
To say that another way: a last call message on IETF-announce
would at most attract the attention of people who already care.
A last call mailstorm here will attract the attention of
people who ought to care, and slightly interrupt the viewing
experience of people who don't care.
That said, I'm all for attempting to dissuade inappropriate
messages during such a mailstorm. But the mailstorm itself
has value.
Brian
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Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478