--On Monday, June 01, 2009 18:30 +0300 Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
Joel,
However, the devil is in the details.
As I understand it, the reason for calling the extra note
"exceptional" is that the IESG has in the past sometimes used
that note to place far more pejorative language than you
suggest, in places that it really does not belong. That can
turn a reasoanble publicaiton request into a political fight.
That's true. However, I think that 3932bis (any version) is
already supposed to reduce that problem, by not having
standard, default pejorative language.
Joel,
I share your concerns. While I have not yet read -07 carefully,
my sense is that -06 was more satisfactory and that the
substantive differences to -07 tend to reopen doors and
encourage behavior best avoided. That said, 3932bis is clearly
better than 3932 (at least as it has been interpreted) and I
have to pretty much agree with Jari that the differences don't
amount to anything if one or more ADs decide to misbehave and
the IESG decides to go along.
The changes in -07 relate to the frequency of notes and their
content. I'm not sure the frequency matters for avoiding the
pejorative language problem. If the IESG puts in bad language,
they can do so both in -06 and -07... if you want to solve
that problem you need a couple of things: first, remove the
bad default language. Second, provide a better instruction on
what the note, if any, should contain. I think -07 is an
improvement in this respect, because it now talks about the
relationship of the RFC to IETF and pointers to standards
track specifications. Third, the IESG folk simply need to have
good judgment about using the notes. And if they don't, Nomcom
should hear about it...
Actually, I would hope that, under the new RFC Editor system,
the ISE and/or RSE would feel enabled to appeal every time the
IESG pushes past the kind of evaluation or statements on which
the spirit of both 3932 (as I originally read it) and 3932bis
focus... or to simply ignore the IESG statement/request.
Indeed, I would hope that, unless the reasons for the IESG
statement are clear, that they would feel obligated to do so --
from my point of view, any legitimate situation in which the
IESG feels obligated to make a statement is one in which authors
and the ISE process have failed to make the document and its
relationship to other work clear. In general, if the problems
are real, it is better to fix documents that exhibit them than
to patch in "statements", regardless of where those are coming
from.
I hope and trust that it will never be necessary to develop or
invoke procedures in that area. But, were abuses to occur, I
would hope that there would be a sufficient record of appeals
and the associated discussion to make the issues far more clear
to a relevant Nomcom than just being passed a message. In fact,
I'd expect an AD who lost one or two such appeals to either
adjust his or her attitudes or resign, without having to wait
for a Nomcom.
I would encourage everyone interested in the topic to study the
RFC Editor Model document, RFCs 4844 and 4846, and any job
descriptions and SOWs to be sure that none of them contain any
language that would prevent the use of the appeals process to
deal with abuses in this area by IESG members.
john
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf