Re: [Geopriv] Irregularities with the GEOPRIV Meeting at IETF 68

I'm following up to Cullen's note, but I've read Sam's note, Joel's note, 
and Ted's note. I tried to keep my own note short, but really admire Joel's 
brevity...
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the EDU team members who worked on the WG Chairs/WG 
Leadership tutorial. If I'm seriously off-base in my note, it would be great 
if people told Russ Housley (General AD, responsible for EDU), and Margaret 
Wasserman/Avri Doria (EDU team co-leaders).
- most of the time, it's not like this.

- the WG chairs are correctly raising the concern, and are starting at the 
right place in the appeals ladder. If this turns into an appeal, the IESG 
asks that appeals be clearly identified as appeals, and that people who 
appeal decisions state clearly what the desired way forward is.
- the AD(s) are correctly bringing the concern to the broader community. I 
agree with Cullen that recall would be (a) correct response to consensus 
manipulation, and agree with Ted that recall should not be the first place 
we go. As Ted noted, we've never used the recall procedure. If we get all 
the way to considering recall, it really is OK to use the procedure - we're 
just not there.
- the WG chairs are taking the right actions to confirm (or deny) the 
sense-of-the-room calls made in Prague.
- what we tell the WG chairs, and WG draft editors, is that their job is 
balancing fairness and progress. If you aren't fair, you'll spend all your 
time in appeals, so you won't make any progress, and if you don't make 
progress, it doesn't matter how fairly you stall. This is not a new theory - 
it was in the WG chair training when Dave Crocker gave the training for the 
first time.
- It's probably not a stretch to expect the ADs to be working to achieve the 
same balance. I agree with Sam that AD intervention to try to "unstick" 
discussions is part of the job. I agree with the GeoPriv chairs that AD 
intervention to choose a "consensus" consensus is not.
- what we tell the WG chairs is that ADs have the power to make a decision 
for the working group, in order to break a deadlock. Jeff Schiller (one of 
the ADs who did the WG chair training for several years) was very clear that 
an AD can say, "if you guys don't make a decision by date X, I'll make a 
decision for you". If this is not part of the community understanding, 
someone should be telling the WG chairs and ADs what the community 
understanding is.
- our formal process is that WG meetings don't make decisions, WGs make 
decisions on mailing lists and try to make progress in face-to-face 
meetings. If the ADs said they were making consensus calls during the 
meeting, that would be bad. If the ADs said they were asking for the sense 
of the room in order to understand where a decent number of participants 
stand, and that "sense of the room" would be consensus-called on the mailing 
list, that would be OK, in our documented process. If we don't actually 
believe this, we need to change our formal process.
- For both GEOPRIV and SPEERMINT, the question is whether having no meeting 
in Prague would have been an improvement over having meetings that were 
re-scheduled/held with substitute chairs. My recent experience with 
substitute-chair meetings has not been positive. It would be good to 
understand the community consensus here ("how badly do you need to have a 
formal meeting slot, given that you're not making decisions anyway?").
- We have been encouraging greater separation of roles (an extreme case of 
non-separated roles is a document editor who is also the working group 
chair, the document shepherd, and the responsible AD for the working group). 
We've been saying that having ADs chair WGs in their own area is not a good 
thing. We've been saying that having WG chairs edit major documents in their 
own area is not a good thing. We may want to provide guidance that having 
ADs chair WG meetings in their own area, especially where there is no other 
person acting as chair, is not a good thing, and that the ADs really need to 
find someone else who is willing to chair the meeting, and who is not 
involved as the next step on the appeals ladder.
I note that Jon is (with Russ, according to 
http://www.ietf.org/iesg_mem.html) the most experienced AD serving on the 
IESG today. If he thought this was OK, and it's not, the community should 
let the IESG know. Clear feedback is good.
In summary - not a good situation, but one that is being handled correctly 
at this point. Let's let the WG chairs, and the ADs, do their jobs and see 
where we end up.
Thanks to everyone involved for working to resolve this.

Spencer 


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