Subject: Strong objection to draft-ietf-WG-*.all noise levels

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 08:00:16 +1300

Hi,

I see that the tracker has started using email aliases of the
form [email-masked] to report on state changes,
and that these aliases now apparently include the WG as well
as the interested parties.

This is highly obnoxious. One problem is that for most recipients
the messages are pure noise (and any follow-up messages whose CC
list isn't manually pruned are additional noise). Another problem
is that they are in effect BCC'ed to the WG, so existing filters
don't catch these messages. A consequent problem of that is that
many people are likely to do what I'm about to do: figure out how
to spam filter all this noise, thereby risking to miss any such messages
that actually matter.

Please please please remove the WG lists from these aliases.
If something really needs to be brought to the WG's attention,
there are people who know they should do that.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2015 14:11:36 -0600

Hi Brian:

There are a couple of moving targets in what you're objecting to that I 
think we need to be careful to tease apart.

Here's a bit of detail to help with that (I hope):

1) the .all alias includes any address that is covered by any other 
generated alias (currently that's .authors, .chairs, .ad, and .notify)

2) the .notify alias is populated directly from the Notify field for a 
draft in the tracker. You can see what that's currently set to for a 
draft by looking at the "Send notifications to" line on the document's 
main page.

3) The IESG directed that when a working group draft begins IESG 
processing, the working group be added to the notify field by default. See
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/wgchairs/current/msg12989.html
and
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/wgchairs/current/msg12992.html

So, I _think_ the conversation you need to be having to address your 
objection is with the IESG on the decision to add the group to the 
default notification list.

That said, there are some things we're doing to the aliases to make 
where things are coming from easier to figure out. None of what's below 
will change whether a working group gets the state-change notifications, 
but it may help explain other aspects of what you've been recently seeing.

4) We're working on providing pages that show the expansions of the 
aliases at ietf.org similar to the pages that are at tools.ietf.org. 
This isn't happening immediately because the mail processing systems are 
different, and there are some extra gears that we're having to incorporate.

5) The most recent datatracker releases have made incremental changes to 
the way the aliases are used. In particular, mail sent through the 
aliases should end up with fully expanded To header fields at this 
point. We are also working on adding the fields (already present when 
using @tools.ietf.org aliases) that make it easy to see exactly what 
alias got invoked.

6) From the links above, you'll see that part of the  original 
implementation was to add .all to the Notify field (in addition to the 
working group). That led to some trouble since .all contains .notify - 
there's an include loop, and some of the dynamics of integrating with 
the mail handling at @ietf.org vs @tools.ietf.org led to not catching 
that loop in the right place (this was affecting a few drafts last 
week). This has been addressed, both by more careful loop protection, 
and by changing what gets put in Notify to not use .all directly.

Again, those last 3 items are just part of the context - they don't 
affect the primary concern you're raising. That lives solidly with 
spirit of the decision at item 3) above.

RjS

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 20:56:54 +0000

Agreed. I use the draft-*.all mailing lists to do what their description says they do - copy the authors, working group chairs, and relevant ADs on something specific to the draft. If I mean it to be seen by the working group, I copy the working group.

> On Feb 9, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:31:33 -0500

--On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 08:00 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> This is highly obnoxious

+1.

For those of us whose instinctive response to a high level of
noise on a WG list that we don't absolutely need to follow is to
simply ignore that list (or delete traffic to it without
reading) for a while, this comes close to a self-inflicted DoS
attack on the WG.

    john

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:25:12 -0600

One detail that's a consequence of what's below that I wanted to highlight:

If a group is getting copied on the state change notices for a document 
right now, it's because the group is listed in the "Send notices to" 
(aka Notify) field in the datatracker. If a chair wants to alter that 
for a document (or all documents for a group), they can do so by editing 
the notify field (or asking their AD to do so). In any case, I suggest 
coordinating that with the appropriate AD given what's in the links I 
sent below.

RjS

On 2/9/15 2:11 PM, Robert Sparks wrote:
> Hi Brian:
>
> There are a couple of moving targets in what you're objecting to that 
> I think we need to be careful to tease apart.
>
> where things are coming from easier to figure out. None of what's 
> below will change whether a working group gets the state-change 
> notifications, but it may help explain other aspects of what you've 
> been recently seeing.
>
> This isn't happening immediately because the mail processing systems 
> are different, and there are some extra gears that we're having to 
> incorporate.
>
> 5) The most recent datatracker releases have made incremental changes 
> to the way the aliases are used. In particular, mail sent through the

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 16:49:48 -0600

On 2/9/15 2:11 PM, Robert Sparks wrote:
> I _think_ the conversation you need to be having to address your 

That's fair. Speaking as one of the folks involved in the change:

The IESG, in part at the behest of the community, wanted to (by default) 
make sure that IESG ballots were copied to the WG mailing list instead 
of being a private conversation between the authors, the chairs, and the 
IESG, invisible to anyone else in the community. Seeing the ballots can 
always be turned off on a case-by-case basis, but it seemed better to 
have that as default instead of having to remember to turn it on on a 
case-by-case basis.

Now, the mechanism used to accomplish that (adding the WG to the .notify 
alias, which in turn adds it to the .all alias) sends *all* 
notifications regarding a document to the WG by default. Perhaps we want 
to change that.

Are there particular notifications that you *don't* want copied to the 
WG? Or maybe more to the point, are there notifications that you *do* 
want copied to the WG?

We'll work with the tools folks to make the right thing happen.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

---

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:01:18 +0100

>WG? Or maybe more to the point, are there notifications that you *do* 

For instance, it would be nice not to get redundant notifications like

  I-D Action: draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc7238bis-03.txt

immediately followed by

  New Version Notification - draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc7238bis-03.txt

on WG mailing lists.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
D-10243 Berlin · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
 Available for hire in Berlin (early 2015)  · http://www.websitedev.de/

---

From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 08:56:42 +0000

Hi,

On 2015-2-9, at 23:49, Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> The IESG, in part at the behest of the community, wanted to (by default) make sure that IESG ballots were copied to the WG mailing list instead of being a private conversation between the authors, the chairs, and the IESG, invisible to anyone else in the community.

and that's a fine motivation.

The implementation of this is the issue:

> Now, the mechanism used to accomplish that (adding the WG to the .notify alias, which in turn adds it to the .all alias) sends *all* notifications regarding a document to the WG by default. Perhaps we want to change that.

I think we want to explicitly CC the list, so that mail filtering keeps working.

Lars

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 09:41:07 +0000

Fred Baker
>  I use the draft-*.all mailing lists to do what their description says they do - copy the authors, working group chairs, and relevant ADs on something specific to the draft.

The document shepherd should also be on that list. I've seen a case where he missed something he should have seen due to a similar list being used.
 
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From: t.p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:16:00 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pete Resnick" <[email-masked]>
To: "Robert Sparks" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2015 10:49 PM
> have that as default instead of having to remember to turn it on on a

I think that the workings of the IETF are much improved by being better
informed as to what the IESG is doing and when.  I note too that what I
see varies by WG so someone, WG Chair or AD, is doing something
selective in this area.

I prefer to be told - I can always delete the
e-mail which, given the structure of the IETF WGs, is something I have
to do a lot of anyway.  I am rarely interested in everything a WG
takes up, sometimes only a third of the adopted I-Ds (apps-discuss and
v6ops come to mind as having a particularly broad palette).  One or two
more deletions is neither here nor there (and sometimes it also serves
as a 'keepalive' on a quiet WG list -  saves me checking the archives to
see if I have been unwittingly unsubscribed :-).

So, strong support for the better informed WG, even when it means that I
have more e-mails to delete,

Tom Petch

---

From: Lou Berger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 07:39:36 -0500

On February 10, 2015 4:02:17 AM "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]> wrote:
 ...
> alias, which in turn adds it to the .all alias) sends *all* notifications 
> regarding a document to the WG by default. Perhaps we want to change that.
>

+1

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 08:10:54 -0600

> I think we want to explicitly CC the list, so that mail filtering keeps working.
If I understand things correctly, the expansion I mentioned in point 5 
of my earlier message accomplishes this part of what you are wanting 
(with To: rather than CC:, and is already deployed. If you are seeing 
mail today where that's not the case, please let me know.

---

From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 17:16:46 +0000

> On Feb 10, 2015, at 1:41 AM, Dearlove, Christopher (UK) <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Fred Baker

Yes

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:11:18 +1300

Tom,

On 10/02/2015 23:16, t.p. wrote:
> informed as to what the IESG is doing and when.  

At a macro level, yes. But the tracker (quite correctly) logs all kinds
of trivial state changes that really are noise to most people most of the
time. Those shouldn't be broadcast.

> I note too that what I
> selective in this area. I prefer to be told - I can always delete the
> to do a lot of anyway.

Sure - if the messages are sent (not BCC) to the WG list that is
relatively painless. Robert assures us that will be the case, which
will definitely help. But the trivia should be narrowcast.

> I am rarely interested in everything a WG

The problem isn't on the quiet lists...

I would quite like to be able to "subscribe" to receive updates on a specific
draft rather than on every draft in the WG. But maybe that is a feature request
too far.

    Brian

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 13:26:54 -0600

Trimming:

On 2/10/15 1:11 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> I would quite like to be able to "subscribe" to receive updates on a 
> specific draft rather than on every draft in the WG. But maybe that is 
> a feature request too far. 
If I understand what you're asking, the feature is already present (it 
was added some time back - the project was called the "community tracker").

Take a look at the "My tracked docs" link in the navbar, and the "Track 
this document" link on a document's main page.
You can also add things to your list using the first column of any 
search result.

If I'm not understanding, please let me know what I missed.

RjS

---

From: t.p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 09:28:45 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>
To: "t.p." <[email-masked]>; "Pete Resnick"
<[email-masked]>; "Robert Sparks" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "ietf" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 7:11 PM
> >> of being a private conversation between the authors, the chairs,
and
> > the

Brian

I think that this needs taking down to specifics.  In the good old days,
we would have a period of months or years of silence, during which
something may or may not be happening (like waiting on a Normative
Reference).  Now I see progress reports which as neither an editor nor
chair nor shepherd nor AD nor anything except a subscriber to a WG list
I would never see.  (I suspect that as the editor of many I-Ds you will
be being kept up-to-date via different channels).

The only post I would regard as redundant is the one about a new
version, which sometimes comes twice, but then not always.  Some WG
chairs/ADs are very tight about what they allow those on the list to be
allowed to know (without, that is, the hassle of going onto the ever
harder to use IETF website and poking around).

Tom Petch

> I would quite like to be able to "subscribe" to receive updates on a
specific

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 17:52:09 +0100

Hi Christopher, Brian,

On 2015-02-10 10:41, Dearlove, Christopher (UK) wrote:
> Fred Baker
>> I use the draft-*.all mailing lists to do what their description
>> says they do - copy the authors, working group chairs, and relevant
>> ADs on something specific to the draft.
> 
> The document shepherd should also be on that list. I've seen a case
> where he missed something he should have seen due to a similar list
> being used.

The shepherd is on the .all list, and this has been the case since the
.shepherd alias was introduced, which was about a year or year and a half
ago.  The aliases that are created currently are as follows (except that
aliases that have empty expansions are not created):

	<draftname>		Authors
	<draftname>.authors	Authors
	<draftname>.chairs	WG Chairs (for WG drafts)
	<draftname>.ad		AD/ADs (if any)
	<draftname>.shepherd	Shepherd (if any)
	<draftname>.notify	As set in the document's notify field in the DB

and finally

	<draftname>.all		All of the above

Setting the notify field to contain .all or all of the components of .all,
which is the default now, essentially makes the notify field and the .all
aliases have the same semantics.  I think that's a mistake.

A better solution would be to tease apart which kind of notifications
should be sent to all, and which need go only to people more closely
involved in the day-to-day handling of a draft, and have the datatracker
send notifications either to .notify or .all, depending on the kind of
notification.

Possibly an additional alias  <draftname>.group would turn out to be
useful in order to populate .all with the WG list, if that is deemed
desirable.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 00:57:38 +0800

FWIW, like Pete I fully agree with the need to keep information copied
at a sensible level. And like him, I think it is important to keep WGs 
informed about major issues coming from the IESG (including 
Discusses). We just need to cut the noise out of it… one way or 
the other.

jari

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 09:11:56 -0800

On 2/11/2015 8:52 AM, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
> The aliases that are created currently are as follows (except that
...

Besides the email you just sent, where is this documented?

A newbie  should be able to easily learn of these addresses and where
they go.

At a minimum, I suggest replicated the relevant parts of the text you
just sent on the page:

   http://www.ietf.org/id-info/

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:24:30 +0100

Hi Dave,

> Besides the email you just sent, where is this documented?

We're working on both help pages for the aliases with this information,
and pages that will let your search/inspect the generated aliases.  They
will be part of the next datatracker release.

>    http://www.ietf.org/id-info/

Sound reasonable, I guess.  I'll Bcc the secretariat on this email.

Regards,

	Henrik

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 12:47:01 -0500

I was not understanding the problem, until I got 5 copies of the same 
notice about a draft this morning.
The notice was explicitly sent to draft.all, the working group, and the 
working group chairs.
So .all sent one to the chairs, the explicit chairs listing sent one to 
the chairs, and of course the chairs are on the working group list.

So part of the problem is that both chairs and the working group got 
listed in the notify line:
Send notices to:	[email-masked], 
[email-masked], [email-masked], 
[email-masked]

Since I doubt that my co-chair made that change, I presume tooling did 
so.  But listing the chairs and the working group is not actually 
helpful in most cases (I can imagine corner cases, but ...)

So I am not sure how it produced 5, but there does seem to be some truly 
unnecessary duplication here.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:54:27 +0000

Henrik Levkowetz
>>> I use the draft-*.all mailing lists to do what their description says 
>>> they do - copy the authors, working group chairs, and relevant ADs on 
>>> something specific to the draft.
> 

> The shepherd is on the .all list, and this has been the case since the .shepherd alias was introduced, which was about a year or year and a half ago. 

Sorry, my lack of clarity. I meant to say that the shepherd should be on a list of people if people do use a list of who they think is worth copying in, not a specific comment on the .all list.