Re: how to contact the IETF

[Cullen Jennings <fluffy at cisco.com>]

In fairness, the posts resulting from the FSF, uh, call to action, of  
this issue have been polite and tried to make a point. Some of them  
may be more or less informed about the facts at hand but they have  
been on topic and do express an opinion. I'm sure we can all think of  
examples of far less useful conversations that have happened on ietf at ietf.org 
.

The IETF has standardized some of the protocols that became the  
relevant and widely used protocols. I believe one of the things that  
keeps the IETF's work relevant is that it is not just "profession  
standards people" but also actually involves people that write code  
and build products. If some programmer who is not deeply involvement  
with standards or the IETF is implementing something and wants to come  
and make some one time "drive by" comment to the IETF, well, theses  
can be valuable insight. These might be in a slightly different  
category but I think we should pay attention to people that are  
implementing or using a protocol even if they aren't long term IETF  
people. At the other end of the spectrum, we have had case on an IETF  
list where a single person with multiple "sock puppet" email accounts  
was trying to assert undue influence and we had many cases where  
people that knew nothing about the topic just said "me too". It is  
impossible to come up with any algorithm that separates these - it  
requires good judgment of the chairs and others that need to call  
consensus. I don't envy the poor AD that gets to sort out the  
relevancy of these comments.

Cullen <in my individual contributor role>

PS. I have been sort of surprised that no one has asked all these  
people if they plan to implement or use this draft. I was under the  
impression that the community of interest in the draft was very small.  
If there is more widespread interest, it generally helps up the  
chances of the IESG approving a draft.


On Feb 10, 2009, at 9:02 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:19:57AM -0500, Melinda Shore wrote:
>
> > Well, no, I don't agree with that last bit, in the
> > sense that I don't think "replied on the mailing list"
> > really means the same thing as "participated."
>
> I think we're in agreement.  All I'm suggesting is that there's no _a
> priori_ way of knowing whether someone is participating, except by
> looking at the lists.  Therefore, we can't dismiss postings from
> people we don't know on the grounds we don't know them.  This means
> that those "driving by" have to be tolerated, I think.
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at shinkuro.com
> Shinkuro, Inc.
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