--On Thursday, 23 December, 2004 09:42 -0800 Carl Malamud
<carl(_at_)media(_dot_)org> wrote:
Hi John -
Your note seems like an outlier. In particular, it takes a
really *strong* stance on protecting people from each other
because people *will* act badly. For example, the way I read
your note, the IESG will micromanage and the IASA/IAD will
order bagels flown in daily from New York. Appeals will be a
daily happening and people will hire lawyers instead of
working it out.
No, my concern is that
(i) the IESG, or the IESG's leadership, is likely to micromanage
because it has tended to micromanage, or try to do so, many of
the things it has touched in the last several years -- the
secretariat, the content of various documents down to the
editorial level, the RFC Editor, and so on (some of that has
gotten better in recent months or years, but that isn't the
point). Even you have made the claim that they (for some
instance of "they") have tried to micromanage you in terms of
the contents of your various reports and recommendations. And
the discussion of why the IETF and IAB Chairs had to be on the
IAOC had, to me, a strong ring of "so we can make sure that
administrative entity does exactly what we want", which is close
to an operational definition of intended micromanagement. So
that one isn't a corner case, it is a simple extrapolation from
behavior that has been observed in the community (and commented
upon in the Problem Statement work, which makes it feel like I'm
not alone in those impressions).
(ii) If I'm worried about bagels (I'm really not), I'm not
worried about the IAD/IASA making that decision: I expect those
people to be firmly in contact with fiscal realities and
priorities. If they are not, we will have far worse problems
than the bagel supply. But I'm concerned about even the
possibility of bagels-by-appeal, or
bagels-by-IESG/IAB-overriding IAD decisions, even while
realizing that particular example is (deliberately) unlikely.
And, as I said, the issue I'm raising is a key management and
management-relationships principle. Whether one agrees with it
or not, characterizing it as a corner case seems to me like a
stretch.
...
Seriously: this BCP seems, imo, pretty much cooked. There may
be flaws and holes that people forgot, but this would be a lot
easier to nail down if we had some operational experience in
the new framework and then solve problems that are real.
There are lots of checks in balances in place, there are going
to be lots of new people who have to get up to speed, and
the community is watching.
The observation that what I was suggesting was close to what was
there now and would require only a few wording changes came from
Harald and not from me. I was just trying to be sure we all
had the same understanding of what those wording changes would
be intended to mean if we mean them.
I know you don't want to revise the BCP every 10 minutes for
the next 10 years, but if we had to ammend it once or even
twice, this would not be a big tragedy.
No. But I've heard that the draft IAD job description was
floated by a couple of HR/ search experts (I believe at least
one of those reports has not been forwarded to the transition
team because there was no indication that the advice was wanted)
and that the comments involved phrases like "incompetent
description" and "no one sane would take a job defined that
way". These are not small issues: they go to the very core of
the likely ability of the IAD and IAOC to function. To
paraphrase an out-of-context quote from a different discussion,
I don't want to see Harald become the next-to-last Chair of the
IETF because of this process. Put differently, I'd like to be
sure that principles are well enough articulated, and details
left to where they can be worked out, that we get a chance to
revise the BCP without completely killing the IETF in the
process.
My personal advice: let's stop negotiating, call this BCP
cooked, and move on to other fires.
And my personal advice is to make sure that we get the
principles right and that we do so, as needed, based on
competent review and advice. I also recommend that we look at
past behaviors and assume that they extrapolate cleanly into
future behaviors unless reasons or conditions can be identified
that make such extrapolation inappropriate. I further recommend
that it is far more useful to look at those extrapolations and
what they mean about both principles and implementation than it
is to spend a lot of energy on scenarios that are really
unlikely, such as how things would be handled, in detail, if
IETF income from meeting fees significantly exceeded all
expenses in a given year.
You may have noted that I've said virtually nothing, on or
off-list, about editorial matters that don't impact principles
except sometimes to suggest that excess detail be removed. That
is not an accident. It is consistent, I think, with your desire
to get this cooked and out but without pushing important issues
under the proverbial rug in the process.
YMMD, of course, and likely does.
best,
john
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