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Re: Proposal for a revised procedure-making process for the IETF

2001-10-13 18:50:02

On Sat, 13 Oct 2001, Keith Moore wrote:

    > The issue is not whether POISSON discusses any particular topic but what
    > is the result (actions after consensus) of that discussion, regardless
    > of where it took place.
    
    The issues are far broader than that.  We are talking about dismantling
    poisson and about what might replace it in its absence.  

POISSON is a working group and the proposal is to shut it down, just as
POISED and POISED95 existed and were shutdown after a time.  It will be
replaced with another (probably more than one) working group as needed.

I don't share your concern.  Working groups coming and going is how
things work.  I don't understand why shutting down this group is a
"dismantling" and creating a new one is going to be a problem.

Perhaps you're concerned about whether or not a new group will ever come
into existence?  I suppose that's a risk but I'm not inclined to take
any action with respect to that particular risk unless it's problem.

As far as what will exist while POISSON is gone and before another group
comes along, I don't see much change myself.  The "public sounding
board" of the poised list is being explicitly replaced by the ietf list
so where's the loss?  Discussions won't take place in the venue of a
working group, per se, but I still do not understand why this is an
issue.  It doesn't change the process as far as how POISSON worked from
my point of view, speaking as co-Chair of POISSON.

    Whether chartered for that purpose or not, poisson served as a public
    sounding board for problems with our processes.  The number of problems
    that were aired in this way illustrates a need for better means of 
    resolving these problems.

Perhaps we really do need a better means of resolving such problems, but
what is happening here is status quo as far as I can tell.  We're using
what is available to us: shut down this working group and creating
another, while keeping a public sounding board.

    several IESG members were indeed sensitive to the awkwardness of refusing 
    to allow the poisson WG to make recommendations about process that IESG 
    doesn't like.

This proposal neither fixes nor worsens this issue.  There's still an
open forum for discussing issues and there is still a means of bringing
such issues to the IESG to create a working group.

Where's the issue?

    > This issue is only interesting to the extent that you believe the IESG
    > does not already control POISSON.  
    
    Clearly it has not controlled discussion on poisson, ...  However,
    one might conclude that pulling the plug on poisson is an attempt to
    squelch such complaints.  I don't believe that, but I do believe
    that the complaints that we've seen on poisson are indicative of
    more general problems that need to be addressed.

And you're expecting it to control discussion on the ietf list?

And what plug is pulled?  A working group is shutting down and one will
come into existence to identify issues to be addressed.  We will then
create one or more new working groups to address those issues.  Bring
your problem list to that group.

In the meantime the proposal is careful to make sure the public sounding
board function of POISSON remains intact by moving it to the ietf list.

How does this problem change the way things are now?

    IESG is already spread too thin trying to do technical review and area
    management. and as for having IESG be critical path for appeals, in my 
    experience it's not very good at that - it's too busy (and therefore
    too slow) and it's almost inherently too biased.

Bring this issue forward to be discussed at the next working group.  I
do not understand why it is at all relevant to the shutting down of
POISSON.

    What I'm 
    saying is that we have problems which cannot be satisfactorily addressed 
    merely by telling people "bring this discussion to the IETF list".

How is this different than suggesting they are satisfactorily addressed
by bringing them to the poised list?  If it isn't then I don't see how
it is relevant to shutting down POISSON.  It might be an issue that
deserves attention but it's not worthy of continuing the life of
POISSON.

Jim

--
James M. Galvin <galvin(_at_)acm(_dot_)org>
co-Chair of POISSON but speaking for myself



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