Subject: SM's questions about IETF mailing lists

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 May 2020 10:16:41 -0400

Hi, SM, and thanks for your follow-up.  I'm splitting your question to
a separate thread to avoid distractions in the thread for direct
feedback on the experiment.

> I asked a question [1] about the planned experiment in September
> 2019.  Nobody from the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)
> commented on it.

I'm sorry that I missed your question before, and I'll give you my
opinion on it now -- I haven't discussed this with other ADs, so it's
just my own thoughts here.

> I followed the plenary meeting during which a few persons suggested
> that the Last Call messages be moved to another mailing list due to the
> volume of emails unrelated to Last Calls.  The number of monthly Last
> Call emails is usually in the single digits.

That's not what I see when I look.  As I look right now I see about 60
message threads dated in April, many of them with multiple messages
(one has 24, and many have 4 to 6).  These do not include
announcements, and mostly include directorate and review team reviews
but also comments from individuals not reviewing for review teams.

In any case, the point is not the number of last call posts, but the
separation of last call discussion from the other discussion on the
main IETF list, which often swamps the last calls and makes them
harder for some to find.

> Every now and then the
> mailing list is used for announcements, e.g. blog posts, IAB call for
> comments, or some proposed change like the one which you sent.  I find
> it odd that emails which could be described as announcements are sent
> to this mailing list when there is another mailing list for that
> purpose.

Indeed, and I think there are three effects here:

1. Many announcements go to <ietf-announce>, but the sender wants to
make sure that an announcement of particular importance to the
community is seen as widely as possible and also posts it to <ietf>.
Examples are solicitations for NomCom members, candidates, and
feedback; and announcements about what happened with IETF 107.

2. Depending upon what email client you use and how it presents the
messages (I use the gmail web client and see this effect) a message
posted to <ietf-announce> and replied to by someone in the community
(with the reply going to <ietf>) will appear in the client to be on
both lists.

3. The number of people who can post to <ietf-announce> is
intentionally quite limited.  My messages about the last-call list
experiment, for example, could have been sent by the IETF Chair or the
Secretariat and gone to the <ietf-announce> list, but (a) as I was
holding the "token" on that we decided that I would send it on behalf
of the IESG, and (b) as the message was asking for discussion, the
ensuing discussion would happen on <ietf> anyway.

> The issue, previously, was that a person sending a message to the
> mailing list might receive a scornful reply in response to an on-list
> comment.  Will that be evaluated as part of the planned experiment?

I don't see that this has anything to do with the experiment of
separating last call discussions onto their own list, so I don't think
that's part of the evaluation.  But I will say that we, as a
community, are doing our best to avoid scornful replies in general and
to take action when they happen.  I hope we all will do our parts to
move us as far away from scornful replies as we can.

Barry

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 6:29 PM S Moonesamy <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Hi Barry,
> At 08:00 AM 30-04-2020, Barry Leiba wrote:
> >It's been around six months since we started the <[email-masked]>
> >list, and we said that we would evaluate the results after six months.
> >To that end, the IESG would like to see comments about how it's been
> >working.
> >
> >Please respond to this thread to comment.  It would be helpful if the
> >first line of your comment gave a succinct view of your opinion on the
> >following 5-to-1 scale:
>
> I choose 3.
>
> I asked a question [1] about the planned experiment in September
> 2019.  Nobody from the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)
> commented on it.  I would prefer if the IESG provided some input
> about the results of the experiment instead the current approach.
>
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
>
> 1. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/L0k7JbcSzrrKvGnbS0i_Ouurq5s/
>

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 May 2020 17:04:29 -0700

Hi Barry,
>feedback on the experiment.

Ok.

>just my own thoughts here.

That's ok with me.

>main IETF list, which often swamps the last calls and makes them

[snip]

>(with the reply going to <ietf>) will appear in the client to be on

I would say that the two quoted paragraphs summarizes the 
problem.  It was easier for me to get to the Last Call messages 
previously as I could key in on the subject line.  I made some 
changes after the mailing list split to get back that functionality.

Thanks for the feedback.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 May 2020 22:17:52 +1000

> changes after the mailing list split to get back that functionality.

This matches my experience, an I expect most people's experience. It is a natural side effect of changing to a new mailing list that each recipient need do something at their end in order to easily process those emails.

In my case I created a new folder called Lists/last-call and created a new rule to filter email with the List-Id header 'last-call.ietf.org' into that folder. Since I am subscribed to multiple dozens of mailing lists, this is a very normal operation to me and was not at all confusing.

My impression of IETF participants is that many of them have a similar level of comfort with their email handling processes.

Cheers,

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