My thoughts about the problems of the IETF

[Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com]

Hi Ted,

I just try to write a few lines more to explain what I mean. I certainly do not want a transcript. I believe you are 100% right that transcripts are definitely not useful, and are also too much of a burden for the writer of transcripts.

Good minutes to my opinion describe briefly the discussion, and the position of the different parties/people involved in the discussion. In addition, they then give the result of the discussion and agreed actions. The current minutes show the result, and the agreed actions, but do not reflect the actual discussion. I also makes it impossible to see what positions did individual people take in the IESG discussions. Along with the agendas this would give a good overview of what IESG is doing, and what direction certain discussions are taking. 

I hope this helps rather than confuses even more... ;)

Cheers,

Jonne.


> Jonne,
> 	I think what are produced really are meeting minutes, 
> and I suspect
> you want something different (a transcript, possibly?).    Meeting 
> minutes
> that adopt a "he said/she said" format end up being difficult
> to extract the salient information from (what was decided?  who is 
> holding
> the token for a particular action?).  Rather than have every reader
> do it for herself or himself, the format that exists now has evolved
> to try to capture that data for later reference.
> 	The "he said" "she said" version of a current IESG meeting
> would be boring (at least to me), as the ADs are required to send 
> DISCUSS
> comments in writing in advance.  What might be better would be
> a version of the minutes that included links to the tracked comments,
> so that you could easily follow from the action item to the ballot.
> As an example, the decision that draft-ietf-group-draft remained
> under discussion would be linked to:
> 
> https://www.ietf.org/IESG/EVALUATIONS/draft-ietf-group-draft.bal,
> 
> so you could follow up immediately.  I think that would give you
> a far better view into the real issues than trying to read through
> a doc that included each of us going "Which draft are we on?"
> at least once per session.  Using links rather than included
> docs means, of course, that you need to read it online, but
> an email-friendly version could probably also be developed.
> 	Since this is problem statement, let me suggest that the
> problem here is lack of visibility into the IESG discussions
> which effect progress of documents.
> 					regards,
> 							Ted Hardie
> 
> 		
> 
> On Monday, May 5, 2003, at 02:38 PM, <Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Keith,
> >
> >> well, any actual objections to protocol actions have to be 
> written up,
> >> rather than merely mentioned in a telechat, in order to have any
> >> effect.  and those are now available in the tracking system.
> >>
> >> it may be that IESG meetings are more boring than you thought.
> >>
> >
> > You may be right. However, the good thing about meeting minutes is 
> > that you can skip over things. Actually, it is sometimes better to 
> > read the minutes than be present in the meetings... ;)
> >
> > However, I would really find real minutes useful, and I would not 
> > believe that it imposes impossible work load for the IESG.
> >
> >>> In addition, what I would like to see is also the
> >>> IESG meeting agendas (before the meetings), and the meeting
> >> calendar.
> >>
> >> I doubt it would be difficult or controversial to provide 
> either one.
> >> but again, the document tracker pretty much provides these things
> >> already.
> >
> > I find ID tracker extremely useful, but I still believe 
> that it serves 
> > a bit of a different purpose than meeting minutes. I think they are 
> > complementing things instead of mutually exclusive. I think they 
> > should hold a bit of different topics (e.g. WG creation, charter 
> > discussions)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Jonne.
> >
> 
>