Subject: Stray thoughts on ' Update of IESG statement "Last Call Guidance to the Community"'

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:16:08 +0100

I finally got around to finding the previous IESG statement on this, 
from 14 years ago, to see what has changed.  AFAICT there are three changes.
First a reference to BCP9.
Second a request to make it clear which I-D is being commented on.
Last, comments from organised review teams should be sent to the last 
call list as opposed to being made available to the community.
I am left wondering why, and why now.  There was a discussion about the 
usefulness of the last call list recently but that does not seem 
relevant.  As ever, this comes from the IESG so will have one or more 
humans behind it, as opposed to being created by AI, but I do wonder who 
and why.

Tom Petch

On 16/04/2021 18:51, IESG Secretary wrote:
> Last Call Guidance to the Community, 16 April 2021
>
> Online: <https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/last-call-guidance/>
>
> In line with BCP 9, the IESG issues IETF Last Calls for all documents in the
> IETF Stream.
>
> In normal cases, since this is the final stage of open community review, the
> IESG prefers that comments on Last Calls be sent to the [email-masked] list.
> Authors, WG Chairs and the responsible Area Director are presumed to see all
> such messages, but they may be copied if the person sending a comment so desires
> (e.g., by copying the [email-masked] email alias.)
>
> It is appropriate to send purely editorial or typographical comments only to the
> authors, WG Chairs, and the responsible Area Director.
>
> If substantive discussion of a technical comment is needed, then it is often
> appropriate to move that discussion to the WG list, once the comment has been
> made on the last-call list. (For non-WG drafts, it should normally stay on the
> last-call list.)
>
> In exceptional cases, a comment may be sent only to [email-masked]. However, the
> IESG will normally need to discuss these comments with the authors, the WG
> Chairs, and possibly with the WG as a whole. Once a comment is sent to the IESG,
> it becomes a contribution to the IETF standards process, even if anonymity is
> requested.
>
> Please ensure that it is clear which draft is the subject of a comment. From a
> practical point of view, Last Call comments should preserve the beginning of the
> original subject header, up to at least the end of the draft name. For example,
> a comment on:
>
>    Last Call: draft-ietf-pigeon-post-02.txt (Avian Mail Transfer Protocol)
>    to Proposed Standard
>
> could carry a subject such as
>
>    Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-pigeon-post-02.txt - what about avian flu
>    risk?
>
> This is to ensure that Last Call comments can be automatically sorted.
>
> There are some organized review teams in the IETF (e.g., Gen-ART and the
> Security Directorate). Reviews from such teams should be sent to the
> [email-masked] list in addition to the review team itself, if they are
> intended as Last Call comments.
>
> _______________________________________________
> IETF-Announce mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
> .
>

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 19:24:12 +0300

Hi Tom,

On 2021-4-22, at 19:16, tom petch <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I am left wondering why, and why now.  There was a discussion about the usefulness of the last call list recently but that does not seem relevant.  As ever, this comes from the IESG so will have one or more humans behind it, as opposed to being created by AI, but I do wonder who and why.

that discussion was what prompted the update, since it was one of the actions that was described as a consequence of the successful conclusion of the last-call experiment, which the IESG declared in April 2020.

Please see https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/8uW6lQJ1feS39M6SAwVnLs2xqoY/ and related messages in the thread for context, esp. the links to the original email describing the experiment.

Thanks,
Lars

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 08:40:36 +1200

Tom,

> call list as opposed to being made available to the community.

The last call list *is* available to the community, so this is just
being more specific about what "available to the community" means.
Is that a problem?

Regards
   Brian

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 15:59:41 -0500

> being more specific about what "available to the community" means.

More pointedly -- it lets folks see discussions of IETF work product 
without them getting lost among (checks notes) 150 messages about a New 
York Times article, 132 posts about QUIC and DNSSEC, and 234 messages 
about inclusiveness.

I'm not necessarily saying these topics aren't worth discussing; but 
it's important to get broad consensus on the documents we publish as 
RFCs, and we can't afford to lose those conversations under the crush of 
high-volume topics. The risk of documents in last call getting lost in 
the noise is far more of a barrier to being "available to the community" 
than the use of a dedicated mailing list.

/a

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 18:27:22 -0400

On 4/22/21 4:59 PM, Adam Roach wrote:

> without them getting lost among (checks notes) 150 messages about a 
> New York Times article, 132 posts about QUIC and DNSSEC, and 234 
> messages about inclusiveness.
>
> RFCs, and we can't afford to lose those conversations under the crush 
> of high-volume topics. The risk of documents in last call getting lost 
> in the noise is far more of a barrier to being "available to the 
> community" than the use of a dedicated mailing list.

One can credibly make the opposite argument also: that it's hard to find 
the time/patience to scan all of the Last Call discussions that happen, 
just so you can be "in the loop" for the relatively rare Last Call 
discussions that seem important to you.

More generally: one person's "noise" that one can get "lost in" is, to 
another person, a topic of vital importance to the organization.   And 
there's a risk of putting all discussions in narrow silos, which is 
reduced awareness on the part of participants of the breadth of the 
organization's activities and influences, and also (especially with 
gendispatch) reduced awareness of the changes people are trying to make 
to the organization itself.

I understand why people wanted last-call@ but I think it's more of a 
sideways step, maybe slightly backwards also, than a step forward.

What I'd really like to see is the ability to subscribe to Last Call 
discussions on a per-wg, per-topic, or per-area basis. Because I often 
identify particular WGs or discussions that will be interesting to me in 
some way, and would definitely like to review their drafts, but don't 
have enough time to read all of their mailing list traffic.   Of course 
I'm perfectly capable of writing code to filter the various lists and 
rearrange their output to better suit me.    But the way we present this 
information to participants by default does affect how our organization 
works, and not necessarily for the better.

Keith

---

From: Ofer Inbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 18:31:00 -0400

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 06:27:22PM -0400,
Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> discussions on a per-wg, per-topic, or per-area basis. Because I
> often identify particular WGs or discussions that will be
> interesting to me in some way, and would definitely like to review
> their drafts, but don't have enough time to read all of their
> mailing list traffic.   Of course I'm perfectly capable of writing
> code to filter the various lists and rearrange their output to
> better suit me.    But the way we present this information to
> participants by default does affect how our organization works, and
> not necessarily for the better.

Would adding area and WG tags in an email header to the initial
announcement to last-call, in a standard format, make it easy enough
for people to set up something to alert them to the ones they care
about?
  -- Cos

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 18:38:15 -0400

> for people to set up something to alert them to the ones they care

I doubt it, because even among IETF participants I'm not sure how many 
people have access to effective configurable mail filtering (without 
changing email providers), or the inclination to learn how to use it.   
But doing that might be a good first step toward making more powerful 
tools available (and/or toward educating people about how to use the 
tools they already have).

Keith

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:42:13 -0500

On 4/22/21 17:27, Keith Moore wrote:
>> of high-volume topics. The risk of documents in last call getting 
>> lost in the noise is far more of a barrier to being "available to the 
> One can credibly make the opposite argument also: that it's hard to 
> find the time/patience to scan all of the Last Call discussions that 
> happen, just so you can be "in the loop" for the relatively rare Last 
> Call discussions that seem important to you. 

That's the same argument on a smaller scale: I asserted that we needed 
(and then benefited from) a smaller haystack for the needles of 
interest, and you're saying that the new, much smaller haystack may 
still be too large for effective needle finding.

And it's a reasonable argument. I agree with the implication that 
last-call@ was merely an improvement and not perfection, and something 
like what you imply -- even finer grained breakdown than ietf@ and 
last-call@ -- *might* be even *more* of an improvement.

/a

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 19:20:39 -0400

On 4/22/21 6:42 PM, Adam Roach wrote:

>>> RFCs, and we can't afford to lose those conversations under the 
>>> crush of high-volume topics. The risk of documents in last call 
>>> getting lost in the noise is far more of a barrier to being 
>>> "available to the community" than the use of a dedicated mailing list.
>>

Actually, no, though perhaps I didn't make myself sufficiently clear.   
Let me try to describe it differently:

Everybody has their own idea of which messages are relevant and which 
are not relevant.

If the list you're reading has a high percentage of relevant (to you) 
messages, you may find it worth your time/energy/patience to deal with 
the relatively rare irrelevant message, enough that you will peruse the 
entire list.  By doing so, you also have the opportunity to discover 
discussions which are valuable to you (and some of less value to  you) 
that you would not have specifically looked for.

But if everybody reads only from very narrowly focused lists, those 
opportunities will be lost, and nearly everyone will be working from 
within a narrow silo.

So I specifically don't advocate "even finer grained breakdown".   But 
I'm trying to brainstorm ways in which people can still at least be 
aware of more diverse conversations, without getting drowned in the flood.

Or from another angle: I doubt that the last-call@ list is actually a 
high signal-to-noise ratio for many, because I suspect that few people 
outside of IESG really want to read about every Last Call.   (Feel free 
to tell me if I'm assumed incorrectly.) So I'm wondering if lists that 
are organized along different dimensions would work better, say one list 
per area with all of the announcements (BOF, WG discussion, LC 
discussions, etc.) pertaining to that area included on the list.   But 
why should we limit ourselves to statically configured lists, if we can 
instead each specify what areas/topics/WGs we're interested in?

Keith

---

From: Lloyd W <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 10:11:43 +1000

Amazingly, section 4.5 of the Tao of the IETF, on mailing lists, makes no mention of mail management or filtering,

Essential life tools, in my opinion.

Lloyd Wood
[email-masked]

> On 23 Apr 2021, at 07:00, Adam Roach <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> I'm not necessarily saying these topics aren't worth discussing; but it's important to get broad consensus on the documents we publish as RFCs, and we can't afford to lose those conversations under the crush of high-volume topics. The risk of documents in last call getting lost in the noise is far more of a barrier to being "available to the community" than the use of a dedicated mailing list.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:35:39 +1200

> instead each specify what areas/topics/WGs we're interested in?

Well, last call threads are (or should be) cc'ed to the WGs concerned,
and if you sort your incoming mail by WG before sorting by "last call",
you will get that effect anyway. (Example: my filters sort anything with
an ipv6-related WG in its To/CC into an IPv6 inbox, and that filter
has higher priority than the filter for my "last call" inbox.) But
this breaks if somebody trims the CC list unduly.

But:

> Essential life tools, in my opinion.

I agree.

https://www.ietf.org/about/participate/get-started/starting/ does say this:

"You need to be using a mail program with a good method of automatically
sorting incoming mail into multiple inboxes."

but even that text has been criticised. Much bikeshedding lies ahead, but
you could send draft text to the Tao maintainers via [email-masked].
Not here, because that is like shouting into the wind.

Regards
    Brian

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 16:52:12 +1000

> still be too large for effective needle finding.

We call this the "stop bombarding me with noise" and "why was I not consulted?" conundrum in the Fastmail exec team - and it's a problem for sure.  When we solve that problem, then I'll be rich enough to fly business class to our next in-person meeting!  Maybe even first class.

Bron.

--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  [email-masked]

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:19:19 +0100

> being more specific about what "available to the community" means.

No problem.  I wondered why the statement had been made and why now so 
compared the text old and new, waited a week for something else to 
appear and then asked, and thought I might save others time by posting 
what I had found which (also could lead to others pointing out something 
I had missed).

I think that 'available to the community' allowed a lot of leeway back 
in 2007 and that, with the last call list now in existence, then the 
2021 statement is clearer.

Tom Petch

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:29:53 +0100

> tools they already have).

One problem that I get is the WG tags being placed in the mail subject 
so that the mail can no longer be collated by subject, contrary to the 
IESG statement - 'Last Call comments should preserve the beginning of 
the original subject header ...'.  A recent thread acquired both [I2NSF] 
and [IPSEC] prior to the original subject - and there is no guarantee 
that they will stay in the same order for subsequent posts and while a 
standard feature of an MUA is to ignore 're:' when sorting, I know of no 
MUA that can be persuaded to ignore [IPSEC] and such like when sorting 
mail by subject.

So no, please remove the WG tags from the Last Call list!

Tom Petch

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 15:23:40 +0000

*   We call this the "stop bombarding me with noise" and "why was I not consulted?" conundrum in the Fastmail exec team - and it's a problem for sure.  When we solve that problem, then I'll be rich enough to fly business class to our next in-person meeting!  Maybe even first class.

And if that doesn’t work, perhaps a gofundme.

More seriously: excellent point and good phrasing.

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 17:06:14 +0100

> community" than the use of a dedicated mailing list.
+1. I unsubscribed from [email-masked] for exactly that reason.