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Re: Call for review of proposed IESG Statement on Examples

2008-09-23 14:27:43


Magnus Westerlund wrote:
Dave CROCKER skrev:

However, I am also quite concerned that we in the IETF are not receiving reports about any problems we are creating.

If we are not receiving any reports, then any assertion that there is a problem is a theoretical exercise. Such exercises can be useful, but they form a very poor basis for blocking something that has a couple of decades of established practice.

This morning's posting by John K nicely captures this problem: We need to make a distinction between topics worthy of discussion (and even concern) versus the authoritative imposition of blockage, particularly when it is blockage by IETF management that conflicts with a competent IETF working group's decision.

The bald form of this is: Do you really think you know more about what an email specification needs to contain than does an experienced email working group?

Sometimes the answer will be yes. If so, it needs to be explained. Carefully and fully.

Yes, my phrasing such a question is unpleasant, because it is confrontational. But so is a Discuss. It is an AD confronting the competence of a working group.

The failure to ask such a question and then answer it satisfactorily invites an appeal or an artificial change to a specification. In other words, it invites gratuitous delay or it invites spontaneous and therefore ill-advised changes to a document that has otherwise been developed carefully over time and with extensive review.

This does not mean that there should be no Discusses. It does mean that a Discuss needs to be based on truly compelling information that a working group either lacked or misunderstood. And it needs to explain this deficiency in the working group's process.


If you are talking about updates to already deployed specifications I agree. But when it comes to new specifications that are written now I don't see a reason to not think about this.

This thread was triggered by changes demanded for an established document. The current situation has never been theoretical or abstract. It has only pertained to a real specification with 2 decades of history.

"Changing things" means "changing things that have existed in an RFC, potentially for a very long time." It does not mean "changing things from one I-D to the next".


From what you are saying, it swayed you at the end. But evidently you weren't swayed at the start. It might be worth understanding why not, since it might provide some input for better understanding these types of disconnection between a working group's comfort with a decision, versus and area director's dis-comfort.

In the SMTP case there where never any communication with me in the loop about my discuss position until after the appeal has been submitted. From the point we actually had any discussion it didn't take that long. But clearly a communication problem that involved several parties.

This suggests a process failure of some sort. Either in the particulars of this case or in the basic way a Discuss is developed, pursued and resolved. My impression is the latter.

This makes it worth considering how things could be changed to make concerns, such as you had, easier and less painful to resolve.


d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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