Dave,
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.
I find that rough consensus BARELY works (if it can be said to work at
all) for technical matters. I've watched working group chairs abuse
their ability to declare rough consensus. The result has been many a
camel. Maybe this does indeed point to a deeper problem (who needs so
many camels? ;-), but working group chairs should NOT make it up as they
go along. They have enough to do. So you need some general rules of
behavior, and this falls under that category. It's a bit of a social
contract where we say "it is reasonable for people to have their drafts
in a certain point in advance, and therefore it is reasonable for people
who participate in the meetings to have read them." Nothing arbitrary
about that.
In order to relax the rule, the guy who shows up in the working group
who has questions because he has NOT read the draft would have to be
accommodated at the expense of the time of everyone else. I think the
change would be a bad trade off.
Also, having worked with standards bodies who DO NOT have this rule, I
can tell you that it's quite frustrating to get into an argument with
someone only to discover that each is working off a different version of
a draft. It also makes diffs harder when someone actually sends text.
Eliot
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