Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-etal-ietf-analysis-00.txt

From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Apr 2002 14:09:49 -0800

> 
> Taking a step back for a moment, see why are we interested in measuring
> something? You measure to see how effective you are at reaching your
> goals. So what are the goals of any IETF activity? Presumably it's *not*
> to produce RFCs, or to exchange ideas, or even to consume pastry. I
> respectfully submit for your flaying and filleting that the core goal of
> the IETF is to promote interactive communications through the
> development of open protocols. 

It's an interesting question.  RFC 3160 says (about the IETF):

> Its mission includes:
> 
>    -  Identifying, and proposing solutions to, pressing
>       operational and technical problems in the Internet;
> 
>    -  Specifying the development or usage of protocols and the
>       near-term architecture to solve such technical problems for 
>       the Internet;
> 
>    -  Making recommendations to the Internet Engineering Steering
>       Group (IESG) regarding the standardization of protocols and 
>       protocol usage in the Internet;
> 
>    -  Facilitating technology transfer from the Internet Research 
>       Task Force (IRTF) to the wider Internet community; and
> 
>    -  Providing a forum for the exchange of information within the
>       Internet community between vendors, users, researchers, 
>       agency contractors, and network managers.

If the goal of the IETF is to do good protocol design, than one metric
of whether we are doing our job correctly is by how frequently our
protocols fail or have "unintended interactions."  Since we can't
legislate the use of IETF protocols on the Internet, we must sometimes
rely on our track record of doing things right to motivate people to
choose an IETF standard over doing their own thing.  If we turn out
junk, we'll loose that "moral authority."  I'm not saying that things
shouldn't break on the Internet.  But the things that break should be
IETF protocols interfering with each other.

--aaron

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 19:24:40 +0100

At 01:36 PM 3/28/02 -0800, Marshall Rose wrote:
>however, it may be useful for folks to actually read the draft before 
>making comments... thus far, i've only seen two folks with comments who 
>claim to have actually read the thing.

I'll echo Matt's comments.  I read it,  I tried to fault the statistics, 
and failed.  I did have a small comment on the data formats for gathering 
statistics, passed privately to one of the authors.  I'd maybe quibble 
about the choice of tools for doing data analysis.  All small beer.

The main message I took away is that there's a lot of potentially useful 
IETF management data being collected on Internet-connected computers, but 
which is not really available for use because there's no commonly accepted 
format for it.  And some common tools for running some aspects of IETF 
processes might be handy -- issue tracking, WG deliverable tracking, etc. 
capable of both consuming and providing information for tools used by other 
parties in the overall process (IESG, IANA, RFC editor, etc.)

#g

-------------------
Graham Klyne
<[email-masked]>

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 18:10:32 -0700

It would also help a lot not to discourage people that are willing to
volunteer. If what you want is your name on a RFC, then the IETF is the
place to be. If you want to develop a protocol, I highly recommend a
mailing list outside of the IETF, where work technical work can be
accomplished without being blocked by politics and incompetent
leadership.

Michel.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 4:50 PM
To: Randy Bush
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-etal-ietf-analysis-00.txt

At 04:34 PM 4/13/2002 -0700, Randy Bush wrote:
> > Another, very different reaction to the disparity between promise
and
> > accomplishment is to ensure that working groups meet their
milestones.
>
>and if they don't we reduce their salaries, right?

or perhaps leverage more appropriate to our volunteer circumstances...

for example it is interesting to watch how working group dynamics
sometimes 
change when an area director indicates an intent to shut down a 
non-performing effort.

In other words, taking milestones seriously and, therefore, taking 
appropriate action when they are not met, would be interesting to
consider.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 18:55:53 -0700

> Randy Bush wrote:
> of course.  but making milestones, especially in a culture reknown
> for poor estimation, seems to be a rather minor aspect of producing
> quality.  and i believe the latter to be far more important, and to
> be more difficult to judge, motivate, guide, ...

I don't call waiting months or years doing absolutely nothing, then
rushing a piece of crap at the last minute "quality".

Michel.