(moving this back to the IETF list, where the bulk of discussion has been.)
Russ Housley wrote:
I think everyone agree that the IAB has an oversight role here. Many of
the people on this list have already advocated the need for an appeals
process to resolve disagreements about the content of notes suggested by
the IESG. This is not about the content of the document itself. If it
were, then I could understand your concern, but it is only about the
content of the note.
Russ,
While the tenacity that you and the IESG are showing, and the apparent
motivation for it, are admirable, the effort seems to be based on some
assumptions that should be reconsidered.
The first assumption is that there is a real problem to solve here. Given 40
years of RFC publication, without any mandate that the RFC Editor must include a
note from the IESG, and without any critical problems resulting, we have yet to
see any real case made for changing the current rule, which makes inclusion of
an IESG note optional.
The second assumption is that an IESG note is sometimes, somehow essential. I
believe you will be very hard-pressed to make an empirical case for that
assumption, and the problem with trying to make only a logical case is that a
competing logical case is always available. In other words, in 40 years of
RFCs, the damage that was caused by not having a note added by an authority that
is separate from the author, or the damage that was prevented by adding one, is
almost certainly absent. That does not make it a bad thing to add notes, but it
makes the case for /mandating/ such notes pretty flimsy.
The third assumption is that the real locus of control, here, needs to be the
IESG. Even though you are now promoting an appeal path, it's a fallback
position that derives from the assumption that the IESG should be the ultimate
arbiter of all quality assessment, not just for IETF RFCs but for all RFCs. For
independent submissions, this distorts the original model, which is that the
IESG is merely to be consulted for conflicting efforts, not general-purpose
commentary on the efficacy or dangers of an independent document. Really, Russ,
it's OK for some things to proceed without having the IESG act as a gatekeeper.
The fourth assumption is that an added layer of mechanism, in the form of an
appeal path, is worth the cost. An honest consideration of those costs has been
absent, yet they are significant.
The fifth assumption is the odd view that Jari put forward, namely that creating
an appeal path somehow "retains the independence of the editor". In other
words, impose a mechanism designed to reverse decisions by the editor, but say
that the editor retains independence. Confusing, no?
The assertion that there is community support for adding this new appeal path is
apparently based a non-zero number of supporting posts, rather than on
satisfying the rather more stringent requirement to achieve rough consensus
support, or anything even close to it. In other words, you got "some" support,
and based on that are claiming that it's the preferred solution.
Before adding more management layers, to solve a questionable problem, any claim
of community support ought to have stronger evidence than we have so far seen.
The IETF has a long history with how to handle calls for change: Has it
achieved rough consensus? In the absence of rough consensus the status is
supposed to remain quo.
The IESG is demanding a change. The IESG has failed to achieve community rough
consensus for that change, but the IESG is still claiming a mandate for change.
One of the problems with our having rules is that we really are supposed to
follow them.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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