I'm very curious how one can set rigid deadlines and simultaneously
require open debate to converge to a rough consensus before those
deadlines.
Contrary to Thomas' view, it is entirely to possible to achieve his, in spite
of your and his certainly being correct that they create a trade-off tension.
In fact it occurs regularly in the ietf, although perhaps less often than it
used to.
Before discussing an example of how, let me cite some precepts:
1. A charter is supposed to be a contract between the working group and the
rest of the ietf community. I believe we use the word "contract" very
intentionally.
2. Milestones are part of the contract and their inclusion is not merely pro
forma. Put differently: why include milestones, if they are not to be taken
seriously, both by the working group and the iesg, both at chartering time and
during working group operation?
3. IETF output is supposed to get used and the likelihood of that happening
depends upon the timeliness of the output event. Not *only* on timeliness,
but timeliness is almost always a critical factor.
As for the exemplar:
1. The working group has to take the deadlines seriously. In other words,
there must be working group buy-in for the need to be timely.
2. The chairs must balance fair and open "discussion" with the need to make
"forward progress". Infinite open discussion, in the absence of forward
progress, is not useful.
3. As the chairs press for forward progress, they repeatedly confirm with the
working group that participants have rough consensus that forward progress is
important. (If they fail to achieve that particular rough consensus, the
working group probably should consider disbanding.)
4. The chairs work actively to resolve open issues, rather than waiting
patiently for it to happen on its own.
As I said, I claim that the above is done frequently by ietf working groups
and that the process is entirely fair and open and the results are (more
often) useful to the community.
One of the real problems with discussion of this sort of topic is the tendency
to jump on a particular posting and trivialize its comments.
For example, if someone says that timeliness is important, they have not said
that other issues are unimportant. Yet some folks seem pretty eager to assert
that that has indeed been said. It would greatly aid discussion for folks to
refrain from presuming that a participant has said something naively
simplistic
d/
---
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
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