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For everyone that has comments and questions, the best way to get them discussed and considered is to join the IETF working group mailing list and starting to p

For everyone that has comments and questions, the best way to get them discussed and considered is to join the IETF working group mailing list and starting to participate. As a student I've previously sat on a couple of mailing lists for the academic benefit of learning from some really smart/dedicated people. Joining and participating is open and just requires you to sign up. The signup link is on the announcement page above ^

dt3ft 6y ago
I wish they wouldn't use mailing lists. Keeping track of threads/topics must be a nightmare.
- znpy 6y ago
  mailing lists are actually great for keeping track of threads and topics. and are pretty much the only open technology that is sufficiently technology-agnostic and interoperable. what should be the alternative, facebook comment threads?
  - pas 6y ago
    GitLab issues?
    - gray_-_wolf 6y ago
      You can easily branch mailing thread into multiple separate ones (happens regularly on gnu mailing lists for example). Compared to that, threading in all of the git forges sucks hard.
      - pas 6y ago
        You can easily search for open issues, tag/label them, mange milestones, you know, project stuff. Plus you get a web interface that's a bit more user friendly than mailman's. You can see what's going on, how much open issues there are. How hard it is to open N separate issues and link them to the original one? It's exactly as much effort as sending new emails. TC39 uses GitHub: https://github.com/tc39/ https://github.com/tc39/ There's also the IETF datatracker, and various sites cobbled together to show the mail threads (eg. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/acme/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/acme/ ) and states of various RFCs. And basically to manage work. Email is great, and it's enough for IETF workgroups, but it's just a communication channel, it's far from an efficient tool to organize (track, show, share, plan) work.
  - tzs 6y ago
    The alternative is newsgroups and NNTP. They are open, technology agnostic, interoperable, and most news readers are way better at threaded discussions involving more than two people than almost every email client.
  - Avamander 6y ago
    They are not. Gitea, GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket, Discourse literally everything else similar to those is more usable than the pieces of turd that mailing lists are. I instantly assign a negative score in my mind to all projects that still find them in any way usable.
    - calcifer 6y ago
      > I instantly assign a negative score in my mind to all projects that still find them in any way usable. Sounds like the filtering works!
      - Avamander 6y ago
        Yeah, I can be grateful, it's like a big red warning color that the project members are gatekeepy and don't wish to keep up with the times. Don't come crying when you can't find any contributors, it's your own undoing.
        calcifer 6y ago
        I don't think it's gatekeepy to say that not everything has to be attractive to literally everyone. We are not robots, we are individuals with personal preferences and comforts. Those that grew up with mailing lists naturally find it more comfortable for them. I'm sure those who grew up with e.g Github feel the same way about that.
        Avamander 6y ago
        > I don't think it's gatekeepy to say that not everything has to be attractive to literally everyone. It really is gatekeepy to keep something that is only attractive to a very select group of people. > Those that grew up with mailing lists naturally find it more comfortable for them. Yeah, which is exactly why I called it a massive red flag. It's the unwillingness to suffer short-term discomfort over long-term benefit of new contributors and overall better user experience and accessibility.
  - dt3ft 6y ago
    You sound like someone who never used GitHub/GitLab/Jira/Any forum which offers categories/topics/threads and their respective issue tracking/organizing features.
- bo1024 6y ago
  Depends on your email client and whether people start a new thread for each topic, I think. Email has more than enough metadata to be displayed like reddit threads, or slack/zulip messages, etc. if you so choose.
- mattlutze 6y ago
  Benefit of a mailing list is that you have a wonderful distributed history of a thing, don’t have to own & maintain a large website/app, and everyone has some way to have and use email for free
mooreds 6y ago
I'd also suggest wading through the actual protocol draft as opposed to the higher level articles linked on the submitted page: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-gnap-core-protocol-00.txt https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-gnap-core-protoco...

dt3ft 6y ago

I wish they wouldn't use mailing lists. Keeping track of threads/topics must be a nightmare.

znpy 6y ago
mailing lists are actually great for keeping track of threads and topics. and are pretty much the only open technology that is sufficiently technology-agnostic and interoperable. what should be the alternative, facebook comment threads?
- pas 6y ago
  GitLab issues?
  - gray_-_wolf 6y ago
    You can easily branch mailing thread into multiple separate ones (happens regularly on gnu mailing lists for example). Compared to that, threading in all of the git forges sucks hard.
    - pas 6y ago
      You can easily search for open issues, tag/label them, mange milestones, you know, project stuff. Plus you get a web interface that's a bit more user friendly than mailman's. You can see what's going on, how much open issues there are. How hard it is to open N separate issues and link them to the original one? It's exactly as much effort as sending new emails. TC39 uses GitHub: https://github.com/tc39/ https://github.com/tc39/ There's also the IETF datatracker, and various sites cobbled together to show the mail threads (eg. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/acme/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/acme/ ) and states of various RFCs. And basically to manage work. Email is great, and it's enough for IETF workgroups, but it's just a communication channel, it's far from an efficient tool to organize (track, show, share, plan) work.
- tzs 6y ago
  The alternative is newsgroups and NNTP. They are open, technology agnostic, interoperable, and most news readers are way better at threaded discussions involving more than two people than almost every email client.
- Avamander 6y ago
  They are not. Gitea, GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket, Discourse literally everything else similar to those is more usable than the pieces of turd that mailing lists are. I instantly assign a negative score in my mind to all projects that still find them in any way usable.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    > I instantly assign a negative score in my mind to all projects that still find them in any way usable. Sounds like the filtering works!
    - Avamander 6y ago
      Yeah, I can be grateful, it's like a big red warning color that the project members are gatekeepy and don't wish to keep up with the times. Don't come crying when you can't find any contributors, it's your own undoing.
      - calcifer 6y ago
        I don't think it's gatekeepy to say that not everything has to be attractive to literally everyone. We are not robots, we are individuals with personal preferences and comforts. Those that grew up with mailing lists naturally find it more comfortable for them. I'm sure those who grew up with e.g Github feel the same way about that.
        Avamander 6y ago
        > I don't think it's gatekeepy to say that not everything has to be attractive to literally everyone. It really is gatekeepy to keep something that is only attractive to a very select group of people. > Those that grew up with mailing lists naturally find it more comfortable for them. Yeah, which is exactly why I called it a massive red flag. It's the unwillingness to suffer short-term discomfort over long-term benefit of new contributors and overall better user experience and accessibility.
- dt3ft 6y ago
  You sound like someone who never used GitHub/GitLab/Jira/Any forum which offers categories/topics/threads and their respective issue tracking/organizing features.
bo1024 6y ago
Depends on your email client and whether people start a new thread for each topic, I think. Email has more than enough metadata to be displayed like reddit threads, or slack/zulip messages, etc. if you so choose.
mattlutze 6y ago
Benefit of a mailing list is that you have a wonderful distributed history of a thing, don’t have to own & maintain a large website/app, and everyone has some way to have and use email for free

mooreds 6y ago

I'd also suggest wading through the actual protocol draft as opposed to the higher level articles linked on the submitted page: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-gnap-core-protocol-00.txt https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-gnap-core-protoco...