This makes it sound like following the work of IETF is an idle task, and all required is to subscribe to a mailing list, but neglects to mention this inevitably means following endless overlapping and often redundant discussions on multiple mailing lists, that routinely span bi-annual periods. Nobody has time for that unless their job gives them a direct stake in protocol and architecture work. This describes probably much less than 1% of the people found on HN.

Meanwhile there are few mechanisms to popularize the results of standards groups aside from occasional sexed up vendor blog posts (for example, CloudFlare are great at these). I see no problem with this extra visibility, and find it quite perplexing that someone would have reason to complain about it.