Newbie

Greetings all;

I read with interest the minutes posted in the pre-proceedings, which led
me to subscribe to this list and inspect the archive.

Although I am keenly interested in the IETF's activities, and read the
RFC's when I can, I have not participated in any working groups.  My
present contribution is as a new  ISOC member, where I am helping to
charter the New England / Boston Chapter-in-formation.

I'm "here" because it seems that I fall somewhere between the existing
list/discussion group (nee working group) membership, (IETF participants)
and the targeted "non-technical users".   So perhaps I can provide a
helpful viewpoint.  As a disclaimer, I also am interested in the value of
the WEIRD work product, as a tool for explaining/humanizing/publicizing the
standards process, thus making ISOC membership a more sensible activity for
us "mere mortals".

At the risk of overflowing everybody's "attention buffer" here, I'd like to
comment on the content types discussed at the IETF meeting.  Here goes...

>From the minutes:

"A structured discussion on roughly 15 distinct content types followed,
with the group classifying each type either in scope or out of scope.
Content types specifically in scope include: current IETF WG and BOF
activities, BOF historical information, IAB / IESG / Secretariat
issues and topics of interest and their impact.

Content types
specifically out of scope include: information interpreting trends
in internet engineering and standards; IETF-related information that
is editorial in nature."

The way I see it (if I "get" the implied charter) there is a real need to
summarize the detail available in RFC's at several levels.  This is a
challenging task, and I suggest that in implementation, it will require at
least two distinct layers of encapsulation.

At the surface, I could see an intuitive, very visual, navigable
"landscape" of the overall Internet (including historical precedents).
This would serve as a painless introduction, to engage the curious.  The
technical content would be represented by things Internet users can relate
to - viewing images, hearing sounds, finding information, "why isn't this
link coming back?", that sort of thing.

Underlying this view, one can imagine a series of "focal points", that act
as signposts for the reader to discover the underlying content.  The focus
layer would act as an intermediary framework necessary to map the static,
topical introductory landscape to the rapidly changing technical content.

Having laid out this esoteric imagining, my question is:

Does this proposed indirection and interpretation violate the "Content
specifically out of scope" laid out in the minutes?

[[- - whew, sorry, I got a little carried away there. ;^^) ]]

Discussion...?

-RTC

Tag Carpenter
Data Capture Institute

ps - can someone forward a copy of <<draft-burke-realusers-00.txt>> ?  TX
-TC