Subject: calls for discussion

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:44:33 +0900

maybe the result would be slightly improved if chairs did not call for
presentations at wg meetings, but instead called for items needing face
to face discussion?

i sooo want to bring rotten vegetables to wg meetings to throw at people
who think i can't and haven't read their damned draft.  but i will try
to be polite and just walk out of the meeting.

randy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 21:48:40 -0900

> presentations at wg meetings, but instead called for items needing face

I try but it's an uphill struggle.  I'm hoping against hope
that one of the things that comes out of the wg chairs
training session on consensus is a better understanding of
why this is such a big deal.

Melinda

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 16:37:00 +0900

>> maybe the result would be slightly improved if chairs did not call
>> for presentations at wg meetings, but instead called for items
>> needing face to face discussion?
> I try but it's an uphill struggle.  I'm hoping against hope that one
> of the things that comes out of the wg chairs training session on
> consensus is a better understanding of why this is such a big deal.

we waste immense amounts of time of the literate in a hopeless attempt
to insert clue into the lazy or illiterate.  

just say a hard no to "i want to present draft-..."  has your draft been
discussed on the mailing list and has shown serious divergence of views
such that facetime is really needed?

randy

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 08:02:33 +0000

Sorry, I've not had a chance to read your mail, but perhaps we could
discuss it in the session in London?

---

From: Chris Elliott <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 03:45:49 -0500

On Wednesday, February 12, 2014, Dave Cridland
<[email-masked]<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml',[email-masked]');>>

> discuss it in the session in London?
I've not had a chance to review your mail either. Would you mind giving a
presentation on it in London? PowerPoint is so much better than just text.
And can you liven it up a bit? Most of the IETF presentations are so dry.
PowerPoint supports colors and animations, you know.

...

Seriously, Randy's point is excellent. Let's stop coddling the folks most
likely to /not/ have useful input and make the meetings worth attending for
the experts we need input from.

I know I haven't always done my homework for every working group meeting
I've attended. I'm more likely to come prepared if I know the meeting will
jump right to points needing discussion, with no time to "catch up" during
the presentations.

Thinking on my fingers...

I know I've had the best of intentions of being prepared, but most of us
have full lives outside the IETF and find ourselves behind at the meeting.
Can we find a way to help this issue, and maybe also help newcomers?

Maybe we could have reading sessions where folks could just sit and read
drafts, with quiet discussion limited to understanding the draft. No ADs or
Chairs required. Document editors would be welcome, but not required. This
could even be done informally in the terminal room, or during breakfast, or
dedicate the first session of the day to this--with an area with
a table set up with a sign for each WG or draft. This time could also be
used by mentors to help newcomers understand drafts and their issues.

Then, later in the day or week, have a to the point WG meeting, possibly
much shorter, but, if not, then the time is spent usefully in discussion of
points of contention.

It's likely that less time would be required overall. This could free up a
significant amount of time for ADs, Chairs, and those that were able to do
their "homework".

Stupid idea, or worth writing a draft?

Chris.

-- 
Chris Elliott
[email-masked]

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:16:36 +0100

> to insert clue into the lazy or illiterate.

The drafts are requested on the lists to be presented and all have
same chance to present or object to a presentation, chairs SHOULD only
put the request on the list and see priorities and agreements from the
WG.
> such that facetime is really needed?

No, there can be a chance to start discussions in meetings as well. I
recommend you object the drafts that you think is a waste of your time
and discuss with your WGs, without throwing vegetables.

AB

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:26:13 +0000

Starting an idea in the meeting privileges only those who are in the room.

The work of the IETF is on the mailing lists.

You MUST stop using normative language in emails. It carries no weight.

Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________________
From: ietf [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Abdussalam Baryun [[email-masked]]
Sent: 12 February 2014 10:16
To: Randy Bush
Cc: IETF Disgust
Subject: Re: calls for discussion

AB

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:11:14 +0000

Can you put together some powerpoints on it for the meeting? About five minutes or so?

It's looking to be a busy session, though. Not sure we'll have time for questions.

Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________________
From: ietf [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Dave Cridland [[email-masked]]
Sent: 12 February 2014 08:02
To: Randy Bush
Cc: [email-masked] Discussion
Subject: Re: calls for discussion

Sorry, I've not had a chance to read your mail, but perhaps we could discuss it in the session in London?

randy

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:09:12 +0800

All,

First I agree with Lloyd the misuse of normtive language in mails,
jsut look a bit peculiar and does not carry any weight.

Lloyd,
While it is true that most work in the IETF happens on mailing lists,
and should be taken there as fast as is ever possible, it is not true
that all work is is done on mailing lists. If it did everything in
Note Well that does say anything about things that does not happen on
the mailing lists would be moot.

I hope you don't want to real work coming out of chance meetings in
the corridors of the IETF meeting venue. Consider me walking down the
corridor and by chance happens to start talking to the a bright person
from one of my worst competitors about something that has slowly
emerged in my  head over the last few hours. He or she confirms the
same problem has just occurred him/her. After 10 mins of discussion we
have something that can go into a draft.

Do you seriously say that we should be stopped for writing the draft,
just because our discussion took place face to face, rather than on
a mailing list?

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 07:22:24 -0800

> discuss it in the session in London?

Nicely done.

It highlights what is probably the real basis for poor use of 
face-to-face group meeting time during IETF week:

      People who come to the IETF are used to working a particular way
      and are merely invoking that established model.

      The model is for group work to be done face-to-face.

This also explains why there seems to be an increase in interim meetings.

So,

      If we want meeting time to be used better, we need to get people
      to change their model and to seriously do the major group work
      /between/ meetings and /on the mailing list/.

That has its challenges, but the challenges are not an excuse for giving 
up on mailing lists or calling such folk lazy or illiterate.

And the obligation of IETF management is to ensure that those running 
groups -- and everyone else who is participating in them -- understand 
the nature of this model and understand how to be productive with it.

It's our community culture and we need to impart it with on-going 
supportive shepherding, not the mean-spirited arrogance demonstrated by 
some of the language used in this thread.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 07:32:21 -0500

> 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

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:04:10 -0500

> Stupid idea, or worth writing a draft?

It's a good idea.   I don't know for sure that it can work, but it matches my experience and desire for in-person meetings.   We do have some tradition of asking people to be prepared for meetings, but presentations typically don't do that.

There _is_ value in sales pitch presentations, but they don't have to be fifteen minutes of powerpoint to be useful.   The point of a sales pitch presentation is the same as the point of a BoF: to expose people in the room to an idea that they otherwise might not have noticed, so as to attract more participation.   Working group chairs shouldn't allow random presentations of this type—it should be done when the chairs have some reason to believe the working group attendees will actually benefit from the presentation.

So you need to take this into account.

Also, be warned: Broadband Forum just does reading sessions, and they are difficult not to sleep through.   So don't go to the opposite extreme that way either.   There must be a middle path.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 07:22:31 -0900

On 2/12/14 3:32 AM, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
> 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?

I think it's, at core, a cultural problem, and that we're not
doing a very good job of acculturating participants or even our
leadership.

Another problem is that the email situation has deteriorated a
lot over the past couple of decades, and most of us are now
receiving hundreds of pieces of email/day.  It tends to dissolve
into noise.  At meetings, at least people are there to do the
work of the IETF.

And I suppose it's necessary to point out the irony of so
many "participants" spending meeting time reading email,
although I think a lot of those people are bodies-in-chairs
and not active in the working group in session (we've all
been that person, I think).

Melinda

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 09:34:07 -0800

Hi Margaret,
At 04:32 12-02-2014, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
>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.

Yes.

>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.

[snip]

>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.

Yes.

>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?

It is not worth having a (working group) meeting 
if there isn't any major issues to discuss 
about.  I am not keen about having sloppy minutes 
for that discussion as it does not make it easier 
for people not in the room to understand what was 
discussed and it also does not make matters easier for a non-English audience.

>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?

I don't think that it is possible to do go back 
to an old version of the IETF, assuming that 
version actually existed.  The incentives are 
such that decisions are taken at meetings; it 
works to the advantage of people funded by 
corporations, it is politically appropriate to 
live with an untruth or a half-truth.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 13:48:47 -0500

The decisions are taken by the stakeholders.

If Cisco does not want to support some new routing protocol then it won't
be deployed. There are many similar gatekeepers.

But Cisco, Google, etc. etc. are managed by people who understand the value
of being open to a wide range of ideas and companies who have not been open
in that fashion have not survived as gatekeepers for very long. The IETF
was formed at a time that IBM was losing that position. Cisco is ultimately
responsive to its customers which are ISPs who are in turn responsive to
their customers, the Internet users. So the IETF is in part a feedback loop
which helps the thoughtful large companies align their interests with those
of their customer's customers.

Another reason they are open to being persuaded is that changing the
Internet is a collective action problem and most of the decision makers
only hold veto power. To change the Internet multiple decision makers have
to agree on a common course of action.

So the IETF is one of the forums where people have an opportunity to
influence the ultimate decision makers. If you attend in person you have
more opportunity to be influential.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 22:17:41 +0000

There's a distinction between 'privileges some' and 'completely excludes others'.

But, to give an example, an interesting comparison: a while back we gave an update on a protocol to an IETF area meeting. We'd written four interrelated drafts, including discussion of congestion control, exposed it to a couple of working groups over the course of a couple of years, done our mailing list work and homework.

A Rather Large Company gave an update on their protocol in that session as well. They hadn't written an internet draft, or discussed it much on IETF mailing lists - because to discuss something, you really need an internet draft as a common frame of reference. But, hey, Big Company, threatening to deploy and change the world. Much meeting discussion was then given over to 'will you write an internet draft?' and 'have you considered congestion control?' Not productive use of facetoface time for most. Beneficial to the company, and possibly to others who would be affected by deployment of this protocol? Well, yes, so including them was worthwhile, and we need to be inclusionary and encourage new ideas. But they were privileged by being in the room. (And I don't think they've written a draft up yet either. Couldn't find one.)

That is what I mean by privilege. If you can go to meetings, you can skip a lot of understanding of the IETF through mailing lists.

Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________________
From: Loa Andersson [[email-masked]]
Sent: 12 February 2014 13:09
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Wood L  Dr (Electronic Eng)
Subject: Re: calls for discussion

All,

Lloyd,

/Loa

--

---

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 09:05:29 +1000

Its a long time since I attended a WG where the simple formalisms of "read
the drafts" and "if not participating, please sit at the back" got applied.

I don't feel objectified being combed out like this, It gives me comfort I
can 'audit' a session without impeding real work, and it makes it clearer
the obligations on me if I chose to speak to the mike, ill prepared.

I realize the best course would be not to be in the room if not able to
contribute, but you will (I hope) understand that being close to a meeting
with potential for interest is hard to subsume. Hence, my suggestion more
WG chairs actively canvas who in the room CAN meaningfully discuss, and
prioritize seating accordingly (or at least suggest it)

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:17 AM, <[email-masked]> wrote:

> But, to give an example, an interesting comparison: a while back we gave
> an update on a protocol to an IETF area meeting. We'd written four
> interrelated drafts, including discussion of congestion control, exposed it
> to a couple of working groups over the course of a couple of years, done
> our mailing list work and homework.
>
> A Rather Large Company gave an update on their protocol in that session as
> well. They hadn't written an internet draft, or discussed it much on IETF
> mailing lists - because to discuss something, you really need an internet
> draft as a common frame of reference. But, hey, Big Company, threatening to
> deploy and change the world. Much meeting discussion was then given over to
> 'will you write an internet draft?' and 'have you considered congestion
> control?' Not productive use of facetoface time for most. Beneficial to the
> company, and possibly to others who would be affected by deployment of this
> protocol? Well, yes, so including them was worthwhile, and we need to be
> inclusionary and encourage new ideas. But they were privileged by being in
> the room. (And I don't think they've written a draft up yet either.
> Couldn't find one.)
>
> That is what I mean by privilege. If you can go to meetings, you can skip
> a lot of understanding of the IETF through mailing lists.
>
> Lloyd Wood

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 09:22:31 +0900

> live with an untruth or a half-truth.

it's not just meetings.  who has funding to spend a lot of time on ietf
work?  vendors employees.  http://archive.psg.com/051000.ccr-ivtf.html
it's not evil.  it's not collusion.  it's just physics in a capitalist
society.

i go to ietf meetings because i get a lot done.  but little of it is in
wg meetings as they have been drowned in ppt.  which means, among other
things, that it is not recorded in any way useful for folk unable to
attend.

the part i really love is when a serious discussion erupts in a wg
meeting and it gets shut down because the agenda has more ppt on the
schedule.

btw, i think many chairs try to ameliorate this and actually try to make
serious agenda space for discussion.  but the pressure on them "i
deserve to be able to present my ppt" makes it difficult.

and the rush to get one's draft done in time so one can present ppt at
the meeting means that those who actually care enough to read drafts
get hit by a massive load just before the meeting so can not do as high
a quality review as they might like.

randy

---

From: t.p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 09:06:25 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Margaret Wasserman" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 12:32 PM

<snip>

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?

<tp>
Margaret

You have answered your own question with the preceding paragraph.

Meeting at the IETF plenaries makes the work in the course of a year
tri-modal and very uneven.

Meeting at the IETF plenaries encourages people to 'PowerPoint' when the
approach that works best for the IETF is to write an I-D.

Meeting at an IETF plenary makes people leave it to the day, instead of
getting on with it by e-mail.

The logic is impeccable - do not meet at an IETF plenary and the work
will progress better and faster.  If something comes up that needs
discussion, then do not wait for the next IETF plenary - hold an Interim
Virtual as soon as possible and get back to progress.

We are engineers and can see the logic of this - it is up to the
financiers to address any financial consequences. (And to the
psychologists if the meetings fulfil the need for a jolly:-(.

Tom Petch

Margaret

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 13:07:13 +0100

> up on mailing lists or calling such folk lazy or illiterate.

The other important issue, is not only the WG times but also active
participants, it is important that WGs try to use/involve more
participants (diversity in participation) into work items, the more
cooperative heads/practices into a work makes it better and will
produce best discussions.

The call for discussions within the WG charter, can be amended to call
for Group/WG participation, efficiency, and cooperation.

AB

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 07:41:11 +1300

> Some of them don't even
> work-in-progress to the masses. 

Some of us believe that is an arrogant approach that leads to
work coming out of a WG that has not been exposed to IETF-wide
review soon enough, and is therefore at risk of either having
a very hard time during Last Call and IESG review, or of ending
up as a minority solution at best.

It's a fact that humans are driven by deadlines, which is one
reason why interim meetings add value, and there are some topics
that can indeed succeed without meeting at IETF weeks, but for
most topics, IMHO we really need the exposure to the IETF masses.

    Brian

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 23:36:33 -0800

Sorry for being late with this: I'm behind, and catching up.

Margaret says...
> 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.

Indeed.  When I do my document reviews for IESG telechats, I read the
shepherd writeups (and really appreciate the good ones!), have a look
at the document history in the datatracker and any last-call
discussions, and, depending upon what I find, sometimes go look at the
working group discussions.

There have been times when a search for the document name in the
working group list archive looked something like this:

[lmnop] New Version Notification - draft-ietf-lmnop-banana-07.txt,
internet-drafts
[lmnop] New Version Notification - draft-ietf-lmnop-banana-06.txt,
internet-drafts
[lmnop] New Version Notification - draft-ietf-lmnop-banana-05.txt,
internet-drafts
[lmnop] New Version Notification - draft-ietf-lmnop-banana-04.txt,
internet-drafts
[lmnop] New Version Notification - draft-ietf-lmnop-banana-03.txt,
internet-drafts

In other words, no discussion whatsoever... just document revisions.

I would ask the responsible AD where the discussion was that produced
each of these revs, and the AD would say, well, this is one of those
working groups that does all of its work in the meetings, and they got
a lot done on this document at IETF this, and IETF that.  So I'd go
look at the minutes from those IETF meetings.

Guess what I didn't find.

I'm sure there was discussion in the meetings, but there was little or
nothing documenting it, and no explicit calls for discussion on the
mailing list, at least not with the document name associated with it.
(It's possible that issues were discussed, and the document name
wasn't mentioned, but the chairs and AD didn't help point me at them.)

This hasn't happened in a while.  It gave me a very uneasy feeling,
and I intent to push back harder should it happen again.  I believe
that we need to be having these discussions on the mailing list.  I
believe that discussions that are relied on from the meetings need to
be minuted in a way that those not present can find and review them.
And I believe that we need to have a record of reaching consensus on a
document.  A series of document revs followed by a last call, with
little or no record of discussion, just doesn't make it.

Barry

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 09:29:59 +0100

Hi Barry,

I agree with you and Margaret. My comments below,

> working group discussions.

I agree totally, and believe still IETF meetings and lists discussions need
improvements, and ADs guidance.

> In other words, no discussion whatsoever... just document revisions.

I experience WG chair calling a participant discussion/input as disturbing
mail boxes.

> mailing list, at least not with the document name associated with it.

I commented before about documentation in this organisation, and IMHO  it
needs improvement as well.

> wasn't mentioned, but the chairs and AD didn't help point me at them.)

I find it difficult to review and discuss with authors sometimes as well, I
like to do it on the list. However, some groups discuss and comment review
through private channel so that it always is not easy for IESG or any
reviewer to know the dangerous bits.

> that we need to be having these discussions on the mailing list.

I agree, thanks

>   I

A policy should guide these activities because it is important to the IETF
organisation future and experience. If an organisation has no
effective documentations then it will not have experience and will fall in
future.

> little or no record of discussion, just doesn't make it.
I agree, but just to point out that I experienced one WG document in one
WG, while editors are editing issues by DT discussions not the WG
discussions, so the editors may not know the rules or there is no much
policy for editors, they can edit any thing even without discussion (they
just use the WG to adopt and then they do what they like and they may even
not acknowledge inputs to discourage participation).

Thanks to you and Margaret for these important comments.

AB