2.8 User Services Area

User Services Area Report
IETF - Washington, DC
November 1999

Three active working groups in the User Services Area (USV) met at the IETF in Washington, DC.

Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) chaired by Sally Hambridge.

The RUN Working Group spent most of the time working on draft-ietf-run-adverts-01.txt. Many small issues surfaced, and were addressed. The group also decided to change the title and abstract to focus on mailing lists and newsgroups rather than on advertising in general, since the draft advocates opt-in as the only acceptable mechanism. The editor will issue a new draft that incorporates comments from the list and the meeting, which should be the version that goes for consideration as an FYI RFC. At that point, the group will close. There was also a short discussion on whether RUN should become involved more generally in the area of privacy, but decided this should be referred elsewhere, possibly to the new Internet Societal Task Force (ISTF) of the Internet Society.

Web Elucidation of Internet-Related Developments (WEIRD) chaired by Chris Burke.

The group reviewed action items. Some were done, but many were not. The meeting had a good, concrete discussion regarding what needed to be done and how to do it. The suggestion was to have templates for people to fill in on the different topics, probably different templates for different types of topics. A template for "hot topics" was hammered out. Issues involved in data collection were discussed, and some rudimentary procedures begun.

User Services Working Group (USWG) chaired by April Marine.

In addition to an overview of USV efforts and an update on TERENA news, the status of updating several documents was discussed. The documents the group is currently working on updating, which in many cases means re-writing almost totally, are FYI 7, the "Advanced Internet User FAQ" and FYI 17, the "Tao of the IETF." In addition, Susan Harris alerted the group to her upcoming work on a draft describing and "IETF Code of Conduct." Other topics were touched upon, described more fully in the minutes, including the theme of this IETF week: privacy and how/whether the IETF should take a stand on the topic.