On 2011-07-28 10:34, Dave CROCKER wrote:
Firstly, not all ADs review all drafts - that's why you will see
numerous "no objection" or missing ballot responses.
Brian,
I've been repeatedly hearing from IESG folk for some year -- and seeing
reports relating to Nomcom -- that, in fact, ADs are expected (and
maybe required) to read every draft.
Expected is one thing; but even the IESG's own rules do not *require* this.
http://www.ietf.org/iesg/voting-procedures.html
I certainly never like ballotting NO OBJECTION unless I had at least
skimmed the draft and read at least one positive review. I'm sure I
never ballotted YES without a careful reading.
...
Thirdly, when I was in the IESG, I was surprised quite often by
*glaring* errors that had not been picked up before. Somebody has
to be responsible for catching these, and today it's the IESG.
...
Is all of this effort justified if exactly one minor error is found each
year? Two? One major? What is that /actual/ improvement that this
process produces? What thresholds should apply?
It depends on what you mean by minor or major, but my experience as an
author is that I get valuable comments from the IESG that definitely
improve the document, even after all the comments one gets from
WGLC and IETF LC and the various review teams.
Why? My guess is that it's because that the buck stops with the IESG - and
that automatically makes people more conscientious. Everybody else can
<shrug>; the final approving body can't.
In other words, if you "fix" this "bug" by moving the final responsibility
elswehere, you will just move the problem to the same place.
That is, the presumption in your comment -- and your comment represents
a broad constituency in the IETF -- is that reviewing only has positive
effects of the review
Of course, there can be cases where that is not so - in fact, that's
the main reason that the IESG defined the DISCUSS criteria a few years
ago.
and it even implies a perfection to the process.
Not in my mind.
In reality, the current process produces documents with many errors,
already. The world survives, as does the Internet.
It well might be true that omitting the AD reviews would increase the
number. By how much? To what effect?
Hard to tell. But it would amount to giving the IESG secretary a large
rubber stamp *unless* the final responsibility was explicitly moved
elsewhere.
Brian
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