Subject: [ipwave] Fwd: Creation of an "important-news" announcement list

From: Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:30:41 +0100

fyi

-------- Message transféré --------
Sujet : Creation of an "important-news" announcement  list
Date : Tue, 23 Nov 2021 10:04:50 +0200
De : IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Répondre à : The IESG <[email-masked]>
Pour : IETF-Announce <[email-masked]>

The IESG would like to thank the community for the feedback on the proposed
creation of an “important-news” mailing list
(https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/irtf-announce/ejTTtjtye40lrILz9z95iEAvJEk).

Here are our top take-aways from the public and private feedback:

1. A significant fraction of the feedback argues for reducing the types of
    messages that go to ietf-announce, and/or to digest some types of 
messages
    into periodic postings.

    One obstacle is that RFC 2026 requires announcements of various 
types to go
    to ietf-announce, preventing us from doing so without first updating RFC
    2026. But the community also does not seem to have consensus on what 
types of
    messages should remain, be moved, or sent as digests. Finally, it 
remains
    uncertain whether such refactoring of ietf-announce would result in 
an email
    volume low enough to be acceptable to many participants.

2. Multiple individuals expressed the concern that the proposed policy 
of CC’ing
    messages to important-news to ietf-announce would cause them to receive
    duplicate messages.

    This will happen, but the volume of emails to important-news is 
expected to
    be very low.  Additionally, most modern mail clients combine multiple
    messages with the same Message-ID into one, thereby hiding the issue.

3. It should be possible to individually customize which types of 
announcements
    one would like to receive.

    This is somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether a new 
important-news
    mailing list should be created.  Such functionality is under 
development, see
 
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tools-discuss/tczQzcpBhe6ppdu8VDN4OzWbPtA.
    Once available, subscriptions to important-news, ietf-announce and 
various
    other type-specific mailing lists can be managed easily and in one 
place.

4. An explicit opt-in step should be required for subscriptions to
    important-news.

    We believe that doing so would be a non-starter for something that 
intends to
    reach a large fraction of IETF participants - how would we announce 
it so
    people can subscribe? We instead hope that a one-click unsubscribe 
method
    will allow easy unsubscription for participants that are not 
interested in
    receiving a minimal amount of news from the IETF.

5. Some feedback was received that important-news should be created as an
    experiment.

    We could do this, but it remains a bit unclear what the success 
criteria for
    such an experiment would be, beyond establishing that important-news 
would
    reach a larger fraction of the community than ietf-announce. We note 
that
    scope and operational aspects of the important-news list can be tweaked
    without being run as an experiment.

6. Some other names than important-news were suggested for the new list.

    All names have various advantages and drawbacks, and important-news 
is no
    exception. The IESG believe the name important-news to be suitable 
for this
    new list.

Based on the received feedback, the IESG has decided to go ahead with the
creation of a new announcement list, as follows:

* The name of the new mailing list is important-news.

     * The ietf-announce mailing list will continue to operate as-is.

     * Posting rights to important-news are restricted to the same set 
of roles
       as for ietf-announce.

     * All emails sent to important-news will be CC’ed to ietf-announce.

* Posts

     * important-news will only receive important announcements that are 
manually
       sent by various organizational roles (and only the most important 
ones of
       those)

     * It will not receive any of the following types of messages that are
       (currently) going to ietf-announce:

        * Announcements of new and updated WG charters.
        * WG closure announcements.
        * Announcements of new non-WG mailing lists.
        * Announcements of new RFCs.
        * IESG and LLC telechat announcements.
        * Announcements of document actions.
        * Announcements of IESG conflict-review results.
        * Last call announcements for I-Ds.
        * Interim WG meeting announcements.

* Subscriptions

    * Every participant with a current Datatracker account will be 
automatically
      subscribed to important-news.

    * Every participant creating a new Datatracker account will 
automatically be
      subscribed to important-news.

    * Every new subscriber to any IETF mailing list will automatically be
      subscribed to important-news (unless they unsubscribed from it in the
      past).

    * important-news is also open to manual subscriptions to anyone 
without a
      Datatracker account.

    * A welcome message will be sent to new important-news subscribers,
      explaining what it’s for and that we’d hope they stay subscribed. 
It will
      also include instructions or ideally a link for one-click 
unsubscribing.

    * Any important-news subscriber can unsubscribe at any time, and we 
do not
      intend to automatically resubscribe individuals that have 
unsubscribed.

Creation of the important-news mailing requires some tooling changes to 
implement
the subscription process outlined above. The tools team is assessing these
implementation details. At the moment, it seems likely that they would be
significantly easier to realize after the planned migration to mailman 
v3. It
will therefore take some weeks or months before important-news can go live.

Lars Eggert
IETF Chair (on behalf of the IESG)

_______________________________________________
IETF-Announce mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce