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Re: Post-hoc working group chartering

2015-07-22 02:51:24
I might add that Lars handles this rather differently for the IRTF.  He
advises prospective RGs to simply start acting like RGs, and so long as
there is activity that is within the IRTF's remit, things can progress
from there.  We can do that at the IETF too, but it probably changes the
way we would do room assignments a the face to face meetings, because
there might be an explosion of such protogroups.

Eliot

On 7/22/15 9:41 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
I'm not sure I entirely disagree with what Dave's written below, but I
do have some caveats.

Firstly, the prerequisites for working group formation under those
rules are going to be based on - essentially - forming a stealth
working group, which somewhat implies gathering people who know how
this works, and I'm not entirely sure that an external group would
figure this out. Our processes are fairly impenetrable to outsiders; I
have a number of examples of work that has "gone elsewhere" in part
because of this. I don't think making this worse has any positive effect.

Secondly, just as I-D is the new Proposed, I worry we're in danger of
"left-shifting" our process again, to paraphrase Scott Bradner. I make
no claim to know what the outcome of this particular case might be,
but in the case of the standards track process, the eventual outcome
was ill-fitting names and really not much else, and certainly hasn't
gained us anything. I have a horrible feeling we'd end up with the
same discussions around creating a mailing list as we do with creating
a working group, or something.

Thirdly, it's not actually clear to me that there is a problem with
taking on work - and even creating working groups - and then later
dropping it if the supposed interest doesn't materialize. I admit it
must be quite frustrating for the I-D authors and WG chairs in these
cases, but I wonder how much of that is in part because it's seen as a
failure. As a radical suggestion, perhaps if we lowered the bar for
working group creation, but felt more comfortable closing them, we
might make a net gain.

This all said, the crux of Dave's suggestion here is that working
groups should essentially form somewhat organically, rather than
artificially created with much fanfare. I think there is a strong
argument that working groups should be able to form almost
spontaneously from pre-existing discussions on existing IETF mailing
lists, with minimal friction, and that pre-existing groups should be
able to bring their work under the IETF umbrella with similarly
minimal roadblocks. I don't think this is in opposition to Dave's
proposal, but I admit to approaching this from a different angle.

Most importantly, I think it would be fascinating to look at groups
that haven't brought their work to the IETF, and find out why, and
decide whether we wanted them to.

On 22 July 2015 at 08:07, Dave Crocker <dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net
<mailto:dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net>> wrote:

    The IETF tends to charter working groups based on a very large gamble.

    Basically, we look for a modestly credible charter and some
    expressions
    of community interest. Then we hope that the charter is sufficiently
    substantive and the community interest is real.

    Interest, however does not always translate into getting work done,
    nevermind getting good-quality work done.  Sometimes it does not even
    translate into people showing up on the mailing list.[*]

    I suggest we alter our model for chartering in order to fix this.
    Arguably the proposal is along the lines ofsimilar to what the IRTF is
    now doing,

    Before chartering, in addition to needing a credible draft charter:

         1.  There must be an active mailing list for the effort. The word
    'active' is key.

         2.  There must be a credible base of participants; that is, not
    just a couple of folk who are active.

         3.  The effort must demonstrate 'productivity' towards the
    goals of
    the charter.

    That is, there must be meaningful community involvement and it
    must show
    that it can get work done.

    The criteria of "meaningful involvement" and "productivity" should be
    left as entirely subjective.  We could spend quite a bit of energy
    trying to make them objective, but I don't think it's worth the
    effort.
     It's not that difficult to tell when a group has diverse
    participation
    and is productive.

    Simply put, therefore, we should charter a working group only after it
    is a de facto working group and the group is already making
    progress on
    its charter.


    d/

    [*] I've just had to shut down arcmedia for this reason, which is
    serving as the trigger for this issue for me, but the issue is broader
    and more long-standing, IMO


    --
    Dave Crocker
    Brandenburg InternetWorking
    bbiw.net <http://bbiw.net>



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