Keith,
I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the ADs' job to push back
on documents with technical flaws. They're supposed to use their
judgments as technical experts, not just be conduits of information
supplied by others.
I disagree that the ADs are necessarily that much more technically
astute than the rest of us.
1. ADs usually _are_ more technically astute than the average IETF
participant (perhaps not you, but the average participant), because ADs
are selected for their expertise while IETF participants are
self-selecting. (Maybe some are selected by their employers, but I
don't think it's generally the practice of most employers to send their
best technical people to standards committees. My impression is that
many employers - not all by any means - would rather send people who
are expendable, and/or who will represent the company's official
position rather than their own best judgment.)
At the same time for each AD there is more than one person in the
IETF who is more technically astute than that AD. So, why should
the IETF decision process favor opinion of such AD more than the opinion
of these other individual who are more astute that the AD ?
2. ADs also tend to have a broader perspective than the average IETF
participant, because ADs are exposed to everything that IETF does while
most participants' activity is confined to a narrow topic area. That's
not to say that a broad perspective is inherently less valuable than a
narrow perspective - they're both valuable, but for different reasons.
Suffice to say that ADs do *not* have the monopoly on the broader perspective.
Yakov.
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