Subject: Re: Revamp of the www.ietf.org website

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2017 16:10:09 -0400

(sorry, sent from wrong address)

Andrew,

I very much agree on categories.  My thought had been that, if
we construct an easily-accessed and easily-remembered page for
the second group with a minimum of decoration, images, etc., it
would largely deal with the third issue as a side effect, but
that is probably worth more consideration.

And yes to the effort and consultation -- much appreciated.

   john

--On Friday, July 21, 2017 04:32 -0400 Andrew Sullivan
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 11:13:10AM +0200, Yoav Nir wrote:
>> The new site is focused not on the existing people active in
>> the IETF. It's focused on the general public.  The place
>> where work gets done these days is datatracker.
>> 
> 
> I have had a look at the beta site, and it seems to me that we
> have at least three possible audiences:
> 
>     1.  People who wonder what an IETF is and how it might be
> useful     to them.  That actually is an important function of
> a website, and     despite the arguments about how the IETF
> isn't about marketing     organization (and the xkcd
> observations about university websites)     we cannot ignore
> this function.  To some extent, we are competing     with
> other ways of developing the Internet -- "living standards",
> code as standard, multilateral standards bodies, &c -- and if
> we     think our way is good for some cases we do in fact need
> to market     that.  I think the beta site is obviously better
> at that than our     current site, which appears to be
> designed with a MEMBERS ONLY     sign on the front.  We are
> the hardest club to join given that we     don't have
> membership. I think the beta site is trying to make     that
> burden a little less, and I believe it is a good thing.
> 
>     2.  People who already are familiar with the IETF and are
> working     here.  The beta site says it's supposed to be the
> "new front     door".  I don't know about all of you, but in
> my own house I also     know how to enter by the other doors.
> Maybe we just need to use a     different entrance?
> 
>     3.  People whose connectivity makes the more graphically
> intense     and somewhat larger site less useful.  I think it
> would be useful     to analyse the extent to which this is a
> real problem, and whether     the trade-off is adequate for
> the particular use case we have in     mind.  After all,
> loading this (still not huge) web page is hardly     the most
> bandwidth-intensive thing a plausible IETF participant is
> likely to do.  Moreover, it's not clear whether the problem in
>     this case is slow backhaul links or slow local/last-mile
> links; if     it's the latter, more IXes (and CDNs) are likely
> good enough     mitigations.  This seems like an issue that
> could use some     empirical data, but I am not sure how to
> get it.  Perhaps the     participants of GAIA would hae some
> ideas.
> 
> I appreciate the effort to make these changes in public with
> lots of consultation: I know how much harder it is to run a
> project this way, but I think it's a good sign that the tools
> are as usual being developed this way.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A