GENDISPATCH Hybrid Meeting @IETF-117

Tuesday 25 July 2023
Room: Continental 5
15:00 - 16:30 Local

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GENDISPATCH Meeting

Status and Agenda Bash - Chairs and ADs (10 min)

Making Less Work for Area Directors (20 min)

Presenter: Rich Salz, Adrian Farrel (On site)

draft-rsalz-less-ad-work

It is an observation, not an attack.

Martin Thomson: IESG self-organizes. This is the expectation. Can they
do their own or follow what is written down?

Adrian: Is the draft to stop change or is there stuff not written down
which requests change? The IESG can self organize, but we are where we
are for quite a while.

Robert Wilton: It is good to flag up. I have a different proposal. They
are happy with the current workload. It is important for the IESG to be
self organized and have flexibility. Hate rules written down in policy
document to make life harder. It is better for the community to tell the
priorities. So the IESG can focus on the highest priorities and meet the
requirements.

Adrian: Should include the grading of priorities (must, should, may) or
just simply pick up in order which still causes high workload?

Robert Wilton: Could be everything. It is tricky to reduce workload.
More guidance in terms of what matter most to the community.

Pete Resnik: It should be a working group. There are a lot of work to
do. First start with experiments. You cannot change the IESG when you
are in the IESG. The community needs to give the guidance. Should make
it as a principle discussion. The endpoint draft may come out as a BCP.
Heard from hallway discussion saying that something in the document will
cause terrible damage. Do some experimental things that we insist IESG
to take on. Meanwhile work on a principle document that explains what
IESG should do. IESG does not have a BCP chart. AD must be able to
declare themselves in the rough occasionally.

Adrian: IESG is a part of the community, and will join the WG technical
discussions if there is one. Then the community will be informed.

Mark Nottingham: For the things affect the community, it needs to
involve the large community. It is a good idea to have a WG. The WG
should be very carefully scoped, primarily about the interface between
the community and the IESG.

Martin Vigoureux: The queue is long. Please focus on the dispatch
question.

David Schinazi: Uncharterable but not completely wrong. Support the work
to improve it. Suggested to change from inside but disqualify to join
due to day job commitment. Fully supportive of a WG. Narrow scope, i.e.
focusing on document review, ballot, clear deliverable, which are the
main source of time commitment.

Toerless Eckert: Have some measurement criteria before experiments, ask
the community what they expect. Not sure about the boundary of the IESG.

Stephen Farrell: Do nothing or a working group. The draft does a
reasonable job of outlining the problem. Concerns about the WG will get
many random ideas and take years to converge, and not able to produce
any useful improvements. Try to get some good proposals before the WG is
chartered. It is liable to fail if only focus on fixing IESG or
balloting process.

Rich: At the end there will be not only a draft. Small incremental
steps.

Stephen Farrell: Yeah, that does not sound a credible way of improving
the situation.

Cullen Jennings: Data is wrong. What are the root causes? Qualified
people refused to compete with the people who they think will clearly
win. So they decline the nominations. Concrete proposal before we
charter something. Have a better understanding on what are the key
problems. But you dont need a WG to collect the precise data statistics.

Murray Kucherawy: Forming a WG is the right thing. Had experience and
got some ideas. Better to be able to offload the document reviewing
tasks.

Martin Vigoureux: Please be very short, Alissa.

Alissa Cooper: The data used in the Job discription is not right which
is long enough to make it a full-time job. Data collection process needs
to cover a broader aspects, including time that is how long needed for
the job, but also the data about quality required. It will help
understand the problem. The preparation of the charter is a big job
before the working group is created.

Robert Sparks: Dispatch is to have a BoF. The BoF purpose is to build a
charter. The goal is to identify the problems that can be affected.

Tim Wisinski: As a WG Chair, we send out many early reviews to help
reduce the document review workload for ADs. That should be included in
the draft.

Eric Rescorla: Far too broad to make it useful. To table this to manage
the community expectation.

Michael Richardson: Dispatch is to have a BoF. Think carefully about the
scheduling of the meeting to make sure all the ADs are there. The
retreat needs to involve more people. The wrong group to decide what is
going on.

Jari Arkko: It is not about process. Only focusing on documents is
wrong. Maybe coach your WG Chairs or something else.

Andrew Campling: Dispatch it to a WG to gather data and better define
the problem. A very limited charter or recharter. The goal is to remove
the overhead.

• Dispatch outcome: Interests expressed in support of this work
  continuing. Recommendations include to reduce the scope to few
  actionable items as it is perceived as too broad, to gather data to
  help with the diagnostic, and to involve a wider community via e.g.,
  a BoF, to get additional inputs and form a better understanding of
  priorities/expectations.

Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee (NomCom) Random Selection (15 min)

Presenter: Donald E. Eastlake 3rd (On site)

draft-eastlake-rfc3797bis

Eric Rescorla: Agree with the problem statement. Can have a WG.
Definitely not AD sponsored.

Martin Thomson: This WG should focus on what should be solved not how to
solve the things that can be solved.

Stephen Farrell (Chat Panel):
I think AD sponsored would be enough to get it right but don't object if
someone wants a WG.

John Klensin (Chat Panel):
That is a case for AD sponsored and being done with it... especially
with Martin's comment

Martin Vigoureux: More discussions in the mailing list.

Donald: Maybe recharter the ELEGY?

Martin Vigoureux: But that is not in the scope of Gendispatch.

Michael Richardson (Chat Panel):
Well, it's up the the GENDISPATCH AD. Lars can re-open it for
rechartering...

Pete Resnick (Chat Panel):
Neither is chartering a new WG. We can only recommend for any of these
things.

• Dispatch outcome: The limited discussion time did not allow for a
  clear recommendation to emerge. The WG is encouraged to continue the
  discussion in order to identify the future course of action for this
  work.

Find Code Related to an Internet-Draft or RFC (15 min)

Presenter: Charles Eckel (On site)

draft-eckel-edm-find-code

Martin Thomson: Is there anything new here that requires consensus? The
things have already been done. We have done here and will keep making
people aware of the work.

Charles: To publish it will make people outside of this community access
to it and use it.

Hans-Jorg Happel: Don't have a big picture about the history. Some work
can be done on how to support the developer to engage with IETF and
access to it.

Mirja Kuhlewind: It provides an unified way to find it if published as a
RFC. We can do experiments more. The goal is to work together and make
it easier.

• Dispatch outcome: Useful work. No specific recommendation was made
  on how to dispatch it.

Flextime & AOB (15 min)

Mark Nottingham: Publish a new draft:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-gendispatch-discuss-criteria/,
it is a joint property between the IESG and the community. This is a BCP
document. Love to have feedback.

Martin Vigoureux: Please reply to Mark's question on the list.

David Schinazi: This is interesing. Had experience that Ballot criteria
are sometimes unclear. It is a good idea to involve the community.
Supportive of a narrowly scoped WG.

Robert Sparks: Good to have the community involved to build this
content. Encourage a living document approach rather than a BCP to be
able to continuously track the consensus.

Eric Rescorla: Support this. Needs to have the community involved.

Stephen Farrell: Worth of discussing, not clear if it is the right
outcome to put that text in a RFC or some derivative of it.

Lars Eggert: Internal document owned by the IESG because it owns the
process. Try to email the IESG and suggest the change.

Alissa Cooper: Understand how the community thinks. Would include the
Abstain criteria. Not only IESG but also community.

Cullen Jennings: It is about the change of the control of the criteria,
which probably requires updates of other BCPs. That is also fine.

• Dispatch outcome: Interest and support for that initiative. More
  discussions are needed to recommend how to dispatch that work. An
  open question is whether this should be bundled with the first item.

Dispatch outcomes summary:

1. Making Less Work for Area Directors:
   Interests expressed in support of this work continuing.
   Recommendations include to reduce the scope to few actionable items
   as it is perceived as too broad, to gather data to help with the
   diagnostic, and to involve a wider community via e.g., a BoF, to get
   additional inputs and form a better understanding of
   priorities/expectations.

2. Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee (NomCom) Random Selection:

   The limited discussion time did not allow for a clear recommendation
   to emerge. The WG is encouraged to continue the discussion in order
   to identify the future course of action for this work.

3. Find Code Related to an Internet-Draft or RFC:
   Useful work. No specific recommendation was made on how to dispatch
   it.

4. DISCUSS Criteria:
   Interest and support for that initiative. More discussions are
   needed to recommend how to dispatch that work. An open question is
   whether this should be bundled with the first item.