On Aug 31, 2011, at 11:06 AM, John Leslie wrote:
Keith Moore <moore(_at_)network-heretics(_dot_)com> wrote:
The biggest problem with the current voting system (other than
misleading labels, which do cause real problems of their own) is the
presumption that the document should go forward no matter how few
IESG members read the document.
Keith makes a good point here; but I wouldn't agree to any rule
that a particular number must "read" a document. Some ADs quite
properly defer actual reading to review teams.
I disagree that that is "quite properly". I believe that the AD's name goes on
the vote, so an AD whose vote is actually counted as contributing toward yes or
no has some responsibility to read the document. Having said that, I'll
readily admit that I read some documents more thoroughly than others when I was
an AD.
So No Objection votes from ADs who didn't read the document count as
Yes votes,
No, they don't. (But I can't ask folks posting to this thread to
actually _understand_ the difference.)
In practice, they do, because the difference between Yes and NoObj under
current voting rules is never significant.
Roughly, the rule says "enough" ADs must enter a "position" before
a document can be approved. Basically, "No-Objection" says the AD is
"somewhat" familiar with the document and actively consents to approving
it.
These "positions" are _NOT_ "votes".
Call them what you will, they're still explicitly enumerated.
but there's also a presumption in the rules (as well as pressure from
other ADs who want to get documents off the agenda) to clear Discuss
votes in favor of moving a document forward whether or not the
identified issues have been adequately addressed.
This is somewhat true, but the "pressure" is highly variable. The
agendas _are_ too crowded (IMHO); but in most cases sufficient progress
will have been made before the telechat that only a few seconds are
needed to agree to "AD-followup" status.
That, of course, is how things should work. Most drafts should not be
controversial. It's what happens when things are controversial that I'm
concerned about.
(One thing that I didn't mention that also needs to be fixed if
it's still the case is the presumption that the responsible AD
votes Yes for the document. I don't know what the tools do now,
but this Yes vote used to be automatically filled-in.)
We're seeing a number of cases where the responsible AD holds a
DISCUSS at the time of the telechat -- generally because LastCall
hadn't ended yet when the document was placed on the agenda.
IMHO, there's nothing there that needs "fixing".
Maybe that's been fixed since I was on IESG. If so I'm glad to hear it.
Arguably when a poor quality document gets to IESG, it's a failure
on the part of the WG to do due diligence.
IMHO, there _are_ poor-quality documents that get on the IESG agenda.
I'm not sure it helps to allocate blame...
But there is a huge variance between WGs on diligence. I am alarmed
by the sheer number of COMMENTS saying in essence, "This document is
not specific enough to guide an implementor to an interoperable
implementation." To me, that's really-close to DISCUSS territory...
To me, it's more than adequate grounds to reject a document. It should be
considered a duty to vote DISCUSS on such documents.
However, we really don't have a process for improving situations
like that -- other than for it to be a DISCUSS and for authors to
actually be responsive (which would probably require repeating at
least one LastCall). :^(
In the absence of such a process, I really can't blame ADs for
reducing such issues from DISCUSS to COMMENT, and entering ABSTAIN
if they think the issue is serious.
And again, the idea that an AD should be compelled to label such an objection
as an abstention, is harmful.
But the problem is actually deeper than that - it's partially
structural (in that IETF partitions almost all work into narrowly
focused WGs who don't represent a sufficiently broad spectrum of
interests), and partially due to a failure to consistently apply
good engineering principles across all of IETF.
+1
This problem, of course, is endemic in organizations that depend
on volunteers. And I really don't have suggestions on how to ensure
sufficient wide-area review, though review teams certainly help.
I wonder if there's some room for process-improvement by formalizing
some role for review teams...
perhaps.
IESG's assuming that the WG has produced a quality result basically
works to mask the other problems with IETF's way of doing work.
I don't agree that's what IESG members "assume" -- they IMHO instead
presume that documenting ideas (even not-fully-baked ideas) is a
mostly-unmitigated good-thing.
I don't think it's what individual IESG members assume; I think it's what the
voting guidelines and other aspects of IESG's process assume. And that process
has been around without many changes since before I was on IESG, which is to
say for 15 years or more. It's not a valid assumption, and it hasn't been a
valid assumption since the IETF grew to more than a few hundred active
participants. (When I first started working with IETF circa 1990, cross-area
review was much less of an issue because the affected community was so much
smaller, the protocols were much less complex, and the installed base was so
small that it was relatively easy to fix mistakes.)
But even if WGs generally did produce high quality results without
issues (which I don't think is the case now), IESG review should
still not presume that they do. There will always be some failures
at the WG level, and the IESG's job is to try to catch those.
I don't think we have universal agreement on that as a goal.
Perhaps not, but I want to explicitly state that some form of area-independent
review, independent of the WG, is an appropriate and necessary goal. There are
other ways to achieve that goal than having IESG do the review. But the idea
that nobody should do the review and the WG's output should always be
considered adequate is ridiculous.
Keith
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