mailing list size/activity

Brian E Carpenter brian at hursley.ibm.com
Fri Mar 14 14:02:39 CET 2003


Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> 
> Dear Dave,
> 
> Strongly agree, especially with your interpretations...
> 
> Spencer
> 
> --- Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> >
> > I believe we have fallen into a pattern of looking at these in
> > the
> > early days of a working group, and then largely ignoring
> > massive
> > fall-offs.

I certainly agree that keeping participation under review would
be sound management practice. But I think Dave is oversimplifying.
When a new technology comes along, it is perfectly normal that
more intense work is done at the beginning to set the direction,
and that once the direction is set, many people sit back to let
the core activists work out the details. That *in itself* is
not a bug.

> >
> > This means that later-stage work often has no meaingful range
> > of input
> > and no meaningful review.

That can be, especially when it is tedious work like a MIB, which
is why we have MIB Doctors.  

> >
> > It also often means that it will have no meaningful adoption
> > or use.

That doesn't follow. Once the base RFCs are out, people either do
or don't start implementing. That seems to be largely decoupled
from whether the WG is still tinkering. (That doesn't mean that
long drawn out WG tinkering is a good idea - but I think it's
a separate issue from adoption.)

Where we do hit a problem is when the base RFCs take for ever to
come out. Then we definitely don't see much adoption, because
potential implementors are dismayed by the circular discussions.

   Brian


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