MIXER example (mailing list size/activity)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On torsdag, mars 13, 2003 07:07:53 -0500 Margaret Wasserman 
<mrw at windriver.com> wrote:

>
> Hi Harald,
>
> At 09:50 AM 3/13/2003 +0100, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>> and yes - I think the MIXER documents would have been much more useful
>> to  the Internet if they had been out 2 years earlier..... I think the
>> WG was  a classic example of the "unable to finish within reasonable
>> timeframe"  disease.... but I still think the documents were of
>> acceptable quality....
>
> Do you think that the documents would have been more useful if
> they had shipped two years earlier at a lower "quality" level?
>
> I don't know if there is enough information available (in your
> own mind or elsewhere) to answer this question.  But, were
> the last two years spent tuning a set of documents?  Or did
> it just take too long to resolve the fundamental disagreements
> and reach consensus on the issues?

I think the number of new issues was actually very, very low; mostly it had 
to do with the way to treat delivery notifications - the rest was just 
integrating and fine-tuning previous work.

The most vexing issue I remember was getting the cycles to do the editing 
done; both primary authors were convinced most of the time that they were 
absolutely the best person to do the job, that getting a new person into 
the editing cycle would just make the project slower, and that they would 
get around to doing the final-final batch of updates "next month, at the 
latest" - which then turned into 3 months later and just before another 
IETF, at which time a few more people read and commented on it, which 
comments needed to be integrated, which was to be done "next week for 
sure"......

I don't know what that tells you....