My thoughts about the problems of the IETF

[Ted Hardie]

Hi Jonne,
	Some comments in-line.
On Tuesday, May 6, 2003, at 05:40 PM, <Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com> wrote:

> Hello Ted,
>
>> 	It does, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.  The only real
>> difficulty
>> I see is the practical question of who does the minutes.  At
>> the moment,
>> the Secretariat does the current action-oriented minutes; that makes
>> sense
>> because they often have an action to perform based on a particular
>> decision (send an announcement, return an action to a later agenda,
>> etc.).
>
> If that is really a problem I can come and write your minutes. ;) Or 
> you can alternate between the IESG member, or maybe the chair should 
> write them. Really, this cannot be a show-stopper, can it.

It's not a show-stopper, but it is a practical difficulty.  The change 
in style that
John Klensin described ("The IESG approved Whangdoodles for Proposed
Standard after a discussion of Frobnitzzles as an alternative") would
be easier.  Finding a balance between effort and outcome may take some
work.  It may also take some resources, which removes them from the
pool that can be used for other things or stretches the time for 
producing
other things.  If this is a high priority, then that makes sense.

>>  (any personnel issues are
>> private,
>> for example).  So we may well not have a "one size fits all"  result.
>
> These personal issues is something that I cannot really understand. 
> (Due to limited experience, or brain power.) What are the personal 
> issues that are secret, private, or confidential. I do understand that 
> you do not minute "IESG (including the IAB liaison) jointly agreed  
> during the coffee break that Mr. X is an a-hole and should stop 
> whining on the problem-statement mailing list. It was agreed that Mr. 
> X is to be dragged out of the IETF by wild horses and he is to be fed 
> to pigs right thereafter. The IETF chair has been given the action 
> item to carry out this important task during the next IESG open 
> plenary - routing area AD will provide the pigs, and horses are to be 
> ordered from the concierge desk."

Sorry for any confusion, but I meant personnel issues, not personal 
issues. It is common management practice to keep issues related to 
performance, hiring,
and so on confidential.  Inside the IETF, you see that with the 
confidentiality of the NomCom process.  There is a balance here
between respecting the privacy of the individual and reporting the 
consequences to the community.  When someone resigns,
for example, reporting the reason may be inappropriate (whether health, 
job issues, or any one of a raft of reasons); reporting
the need to find someone who can fill the position may be appropriate.  
Depending on the person's timing and privacy requirements,
you might actually see different announcements at different times for 
different cases.  That's what I meant by no one-size-fits-all
result in some cases.


> However, things like WG chair replacements, resignations, or additions 
> should be documented. I think the WG has at least the right to know, 
> when there is a chair opening, or a possible problem in the WG, and 
> above all why.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jonne.
>
>> 					regards,
>> 							Ted Hardie
>>
>> On Tuesday, May 6, 2003, at 02:52 AM,
>> <Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>