Re: Mud. Clear as. Re: Rough consensus? #425 3.5

Hi Harald,

On 26 jan 2005, at 02.23, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> Avri,
>
> --On tirsdag, januar 25, 2005 23:44:09 -0500 avri(_at_)psg(_dot_)com wrote:
>
> > Hi Leslie,
> >
> > This formulation is still of the form that does not give the IETF
> > community a direct voice in the review and appeal mechanisms for the 
> > IAOC.
> I do not understand what you mean by "direct voice". Could you explain?
As I understand Leslie's formulation, the IAOC has no requirement to 
process a review from a normal member of the IETF Community unless that 
request comes from the IAB or IESG.  To my mind, this means that the 
IAOC is answerable to the IAB or IESG and not directly answerable to 
the IETF Community.
When an individual IETF participant makes a review request, it may be 
ignored.
If someone is unhappy at being ignored they may make a request to the 
IAB or IESG for recognition.  This request may be also ignored, with 
the only recourse to that being an appeal of the IAB or IESG decision 
to ignore their request.
That is, it is only if someone interests the IAB or IESG in their issue 
that it forces a review.  Also the only decision that can really be 
appealed is the IAB or IESG handling of the request for a review not 
the decision of the IAOC. I am defining that this as not having direct 
voice.

> If what you mean is that the community should have representatives 
> involved in the consideration of the issues, and do not think that the 
> nomcom-selected members, the IESG-selected members and the 
> IAB-selected members of the IAOC are appropriate community 
> representation, I do not see any mechanism short of the way we 
> constitute recall committees that will give you what you want.
My issue is not with how the members are appointed to the IAOC.  I am 
fine with that.  My issue is whether they are accountable to the 
community or the community's representatives.  As written they are 
accountable only to the the community's representatives and are thus 
one step removed from direct accountability to the community.
> If you think that the community should have the right of complaint, 
> then I think you need to accept some limitation by human judgment on 
> how much effort each complaint can cause.
I have not seen any argument that convinces me that those limits should 
be any different then the limits to judgment that currently exist to 
complaints, i.e. appeals, against the IAB or IESG.  I am basically 
using the 'running code' argument and asking that the appeal process we 
currently have be extended to this new IETF management group.

> If that judgment is to lie outside of the IAOC, it has to be invoked 
> for all complaints to the IAOC (making the system more formalistic); 
> if it is inside the IAOC, it seems reasonable to have some means of 
> overriding it.
> > I, personally see not reason why the IAOC is not directly addressable 
> > by
> > the community and does not have a direct obligation to the IETF
> > community.  While I am comfortable with the IESG and IAB being the 
> > appeal
> > path for the IAOC, I am not comfortable with them being a firewall for
> > the IAOC.
> I do have a problem with seeing the words that Leslie proposed as 
> fitting your description. As described, it isn't a firewall - it's an 
> override of a safeguard.
A firewall protects.  As written the IESG or IAB protects the IAOC from 
the IETF community, which to some extent is being assumed to be a 
sometimes malicious DOS'ing environment that the IAOC needs to be 
isolated from.
> > I think this is a fundamental question that differentiates Margaret's
> > formulation from yours.  I also think it is a fundamental question 
> > that
> > goes back to issues in the problem statement about the current 
> > leadership
> > model:  too much influence is focused in one leadership group.  One
> > benefit of the creation of the IAOC is that it spreads the task of
> > running of the IETF to another group of people.  As such, I think the
> > IAOC must be required to respond directly to the community.
> I don't quite see the logic here - we take tasks that are currently 
> performed in an undocumented and unaccountable fashion and move them 
> into a body that has oversight over them, is selected by the 
> community, is removable by the community, and is (as I see it) 
> normally expected to respond to the community.
To some extent those tasks were performed in an unaccountable fashion, 
and to some extent the Chair's of the IAB and IESG (and maybe the 
groups themselves) have been the only ones who had any visibility, for 
some degree of visibility, into them.
But that is not really the point.  If as you say this is oversight that 
never occurred before, then I see this formulation as adding more 
responsibilities to the IAB/IESG, i.e. acting as the oversight body and 
as the arbiter of the community's voice.  And to refer back to the 
Problem process this is adding responsibility to a group that is 
already overloaded and which has a scope of responsibility that some 
feel is already overly large.
I guess I dispute, and that really is a fundamental point, that the 
IAOC in this formulation is normally expected to respond to the 
community.  I see them as normally expected to respond to the IAB and 
IESG.

> Question: My reading of Leslie's words is that "It is up to that body 
> to decide to make a response" should be read by the IAOC as "you'd 
> better have a good reason not to make a response".
I don't read it that way.  I read it as: "you don't have any need to 
respond to anyone who is not in a senior leadership position."  And 
given that the Chair's of both the IAB and IESG will be on the IAOC, it 
puts them in the position of saying "we can ignore it, I don't believe 
the IAB or IESG will back up this request for a review even if they get 
that far".
> Is what you're really looking for a way to make that "bias" in 
> judgment explicit?
I am not sure I understand this question.  But if by '"bias" in 
judgment' you mean: am I looking for a formulation that forces the IAOC 
to respond to every request for a review by members of the IETF 
community, the answer is yes.  And to go further I am looking for the 
appeal to start with the IAOC and proceed from there through the normal 
IESG-IAB-ISOC BoT chain of appeal.
a.


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