An IETF working group, or WG for short, is a working group of the IETF. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is charged with developing and promoting Internet standards. ...

It operates on rough consensus, is open to all who want to participate, has discussions on an open mailing list, and may hold meetings at IETF meetings. Unlike, for instance, IEEE working groups, the mailing list consensus is the final arbiter of decision-making, and there is no voting procedure, but a "rough consensus" procedure. Electronic mailing lists are a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. ... The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-ee) is an international non-profit, professional organization incorporated in the State of New York, United States. ... Consensus decision-making is a decision process that not only seeks the agreement of most participants, but also to resolve or mitigate the objections of the minority to achieve the most agreeable decision. ...

An IETF working group is created by the IESG to work on a limited set of tasks described in its charter, and will normally be closed once the work described in its charter is finished. In some cases, the WG will instead have its charter updated to take on new tasks as appropriate. The Internet Engineering Steering Group is a body composed of the Internet Engineering Task Force Chair and Area Directors: Internet Area (int) Operations & Management Area (ops) Routing Area (rtg) Security Area (sec) Transport Area (tsv) Temporary Sub-IP Area (sub) and so on. ...

Details of the IETF working group process can be found in RFC 2418.