Folks,
In spite of Bert's desire to avoid a lengthy thread, I believe this issue
needs serious discussion because it so thoroughly exemplifies the approach
the IETF has been taking in the creation of its rules:
If a working group is worried about documents getting read, they will
impose their own deadlines or they will constrain their agenda. Having
the Secretariat use an IETF-wide deadline for this purpose is
Procrustean, to say the least.
This sort of constraint is a safe guard against run away working group
chairs
In practive all this does is force groups to distribute drafts via other means.
I've seen plenty of cases where the version of a draft discussed at a meeting
isn't available as an I-D yet.
To begin:
1. A problem working group is not fixed by imposing arbitrary rules and
deadlines on it.
2. Arbitrary rules and deadlines are indiscriminate. They penalize good
workers as well as bad.
3. Rules and deadlines that attack symptoms rather than core requirements
create an arcane and arbitrary bureaucracy that serves more as a barrier to
getting work done that a facilitator.
To elaborate:
Is is ever valid for a working group to want to post a new draft late in the
game, very near -- or even during -- and IETF meeting? The answer is
clearly yes, which is why working groups route around the IETF's arbitrary
deadline in the manner that Ned cites.
So the early deadline rule does not even fix the problem it supposedly attacks.
Working group rough consensus is supposed to determine decisions within a
working group. If the chairs can 'ram through changes by silencing people"
then there is a much, much deeper problem with the working group that merely
having late drafts getting submitted.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
<http://bbiw.net>
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