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Re: draft discussion lists

2014-09-02 01:39:10
On 9/1/14 10:13 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:
(On a practical note, when I have occasion to react to a random draft
that doesn't indicate a discussion venue, I ask the authors "Where is
this being discussed?")

I actually believe this should be a required part of an internet draft.

I find myself being reflexively anti-new-process-requirements these
days.  Be that as it may, I was doing the librarianship thing during
a time when open vs. closed stacks was a highly contested question,
and one argument that was reliably and inevitably advanced in favor of
open stacks was that of the value of "tripping over a book in the
stacks."  That is to say, there were a lot of people who felt there
was value in introducing some (pseudo-) randomness into the process,
such that a person looking for information on a particular topic
accidentally came across something unrelated and it triggered something
innovative.  In the IETF context I do worry a bit that
overspecialization and "silos" are leading to situations in which
we're missing connections and related but perhaps orthogonal work.
I see that happening quite a bit on middlebox-related topics and I'm
suspicious that peeling nearly all draft discussion off a general
mailing list might lead to an increase in missed connections.

Many people have pointed this out before me, and I hope many will
after me because I think it's a serious concern.

Melinda

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