Internet DRAFT - draft-duke-shmoo-virtual-hum

draft-duke-shmoo-virtual-hum







SHMOO                                                            M. Duke
Internet-Draft                                          F5 Networks, Inc
Intended status: Informational                               8 July 2020
Expires: 9 January 2021


                Specification for a virtual humming tool
                    draft-duke-shmoo-virtual-hum-00

Abstract

   This is the specification for a virtual humming tool to emulate as
   closely as possible the audible hums used in-person meetings to help
   judge consensus.  This specification is based on feedback provided in
   the survey about virtual humming as well as lived experience with in-
   person hums.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 9 January 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
   as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.




Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Key attributes of in-person humming . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Tool specification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Opening and closing hums  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.3.  Taking part in a hum  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.4.  After the hum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.5.  Explanatory notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.6.  Implementation notes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Alternative approaches  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Single level of hum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  More levels of hum  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.3.  No hum indicator  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.4.  Simple result calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.5.  Bucket size closer to the formulae  . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.6.  Grayscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Introduction

   This is the specification for a virtual humming tool to emulate as
   closely as possible the audible hums used in-person meetings to help
   judge consensus.  This specification is based on feedback provided in
   the survey [SURVEY] about virtual humming, as well as lived
   experience with in-person hums.  This note does not consider whether
   a better mechanism can be developed for judging consensus in online
   meetings rather than replicating an in-person hum.

2.  Key attributes of in-person humming

   This specification aims to preserve the following attributes of in-
   person humming:

   1.  Participants can hum at different intensities.

   2.  A hum is only ever about one view, such as "agree" or "disagree",
       not both.  There is no way of differentiating between people
       humming at the same time for different things.

   3.  Hums often come in sets of two, but not always.





Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 2]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


   4.  Participants can hear the overall hum, but the identification of
       the hum of any individual is unintentional and not to be
       encouraged.

   5.  The chair will generally assess the overall hum relative to the
       number of people in the room.

   6.  While the intensity of the overall hum is theoretically on a
       continuous scale, in practice Chairs only recognise a limited
       number of intensities of overall hum.

   7.  The overall loudness of a hum is governed by the physics of
       sound, most closely mapped to that of simple musical instruments
       [VIOLINS].

   8.  It gets increasingly difficult to differentiate between hums as
       the number of people humming increases, with a practical limit
       reached at some point.

   9.  The larger the number of participants in a session, the more
       likely it is that there will be some who do not understand the
       subject matter well enough to participate in a hum.

3.  Tool specification

   This specification is intended to be feature complete, which means
   that what should be implemented is only what is explicitly stated
   here and nothing else.

3.1.  General

   *  There is only one type of hum

   *  Only one hum can be open at any one time in a session.

3.2.  Opening and closing hums

   *  A session chair can open a hum.

   *  A session chair can open a hum at any time during a session,
      except when a hum is already open.

   *  A session chair can open multiple hums per session.

   *  A hum is automatically closed 20 seconds after it is open.

3.3.  Taking part in a hum




Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


   *  When a hum is open, each participant in the session, except the
      chairs, may take part in the hum through the following mechanism:
      1.  Each session participant is presented with the following
      options from which they can select.  No option is selected as a
      default.  1.  "Soft (single)" 2.  "Loud (double)" 2.  Selection of
      an option requires a confirmation action and only takes effect
      when confirmed. 3.  Once an option has been chosen and confirmed
      then it cannot be changed.

   *  When a participant selects and confirms any option, they are
      considered to have hummed.

   *  If a participant joins the session during the hum then they can
      take part.

   *  If a participant leaves the session during the hum, they are
      considered to have hummed and their hum is still used for data
      calculation.

   *  A timer is shown during the hum to all participants and chairs.

3.4.  After the hum

   *  When a hum is closed a score **_s_ calculated as the sum of: 1. 1
      for each Soft hum 2. 2 for each Loud hum

   *  A hum indicator is then displayed as follows depending on the
      value of **_s_ and the following buckets:

      1.  **_s_ <= 2: niente

      2.  **_s_ > 2 and **_s_ <= 10: pianissimo

      3.  **_s_ > 10 and **_s_ <= 26: piano

      4.  **_s_ > 26 and **_s_ <= 58: forte

      5.  **_s_ > 58: fortissimo

   *  The hum indicator is displayed to all MeetEcho participants, not
      just the chairs.

   *  When a new hum is opened the indicator from the previous hum is
      blanked out, ready to be replaced with a new indicator when the
      hum closes.

3.5.  Explanatory notes




Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 4]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


   *  The choice of buckets for **_s_ uses a simple formula where the
      size of the bucket doubles each time, which equates to exponential
      growth in the bucket size.  This is roughly equivalent to the
      logarithmic formulae in [VIOLINS] used to calculate the increase
      in loudness from one violin to two violins playing the same note.

   *  The names of the hum indicators are taken from loudness marks used
      in musical notation.

3.6.  Implementation notes

   *  Some participants will not be allowed to hum contractually, but
      this will not need to be enforced by the system.

   *  The way in which the options are presented and selected and the
      way in which the hum indicator is selected is left to the
      implementer.  However, the text for each option should appear as
      above.

   *  The results display needs to show all the possible results
      (niente, pianissimo, piano, forte, fortissimo) in some form of
      ordered view with an indicator as to which end is the quietest and
      which the loudest, with the appropriate result highlighted.

4.  Alternative approaches

   A number of alternative approaches were considered and rejected as
   set out below.

4.1.  Single level of hum

   A single-level of hum was considered but rejected on the basis that
   it took the specification too close to voting and was not a match to
   an in-person hum.

4.2.  More levels of hum

   More levels of hum were considered but rejected as it was felt that
   two levels was the best overall match to an in-person hum.

4.3.  No hum indicator

   Consideration was given to separating the idea of choosing not to hum
   and not being informed enough to participate.  When we ceased
   normalizing the result for the number of attendees, this became
   irrelevant.





Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 5]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


4.4.  Simple result calculation

   Consideration was given to using a simple formula to calculate the
   result, such as using the score not the result, and rejected as it
   was felt that a logarithmic formula was a closer match to an in-
   person hum.

4.5.  Bucket size closer to the formulae

   Consideration was given to directly using the logarithmic formulae in
   [VIOLINS] used to calculate the increase in loudness from one violin
   to two violins playing the same note, which would have calculated an
   approximate decibel level for each hum.  Each hum indicator would
   then represent the same number of decibels, and so produce a similar
   effect to the chosen specification.  This was rejected because it
   would either produce buckets that were too small and so the top
   bucket would be reached too quickly, or buckets that were too large
   giving the inverse problem.

4.6.  Grayscale

   An essentially continuous color-based indicator used in place of
   buckets, would better match the continuous nature of sound and
   further divorce the output from the absolute numbers of people
   humming.  However, this would produce higher-precision results than
   are possible with human ears in a room.

5.  Security Considerations

   Meetecho participation is restricted to people who have datatracker
   accounts, providing some assurance of identity.  Potential attacks
   against this tool will either subvert Meetecho admission control, or
   involve multiple datatracker registrations (and Meetecho logins) to
   amplify the voice of a single individual.

   The integrity of this tool is dependent on the integrity of the
   registration and fee waiver processes.  In particular, they must weed
   out duplicate registrations, bots, and so on.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

7.  Informative References

   [SURVEY]   "IETF 107 Survey", 2020,
              <https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/survey-planning-
              possible-online-meetings-responses.pdf>.



Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 6]

Internet-Draft                 VirtualHum                      July 2020


   [VIOLINS]  "Acoustics FAQ", 2015, <https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/
              musFAQ.html#extraviolin>.

Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   Alissa Cooper, Jay Daley, Roman Danyliw, Colin Perkins, Alvaro
   Retana, and Robert Wilton made significant contributions to this
   document.  Benjamin Kaduk, Erik Kline, Warren Kumari, and Barry Leiba
   also provided helpful feedback.

Author's Address

   Martin Duke
   F5 Networks, Inc

   Email: martin.h.duke@gmail.com



































Duke                     Expires 9 January 2021                 [Page 7]