On Sep 2, 2011, at 7:07 PM, Ned Freed wrote:
As far as our process is concerned, the question is, do we have rough
consensus to accept it? I think it's dubious that we have such consensus,
and
apparently so do others.
Simply put, I've watched the responses to this fairly closely, and I
completely
disagree with your assessment.
ok.
Personally I think this proposal is Mostly Harmless, so I'm willing to hold
my nose about it. But I'm very concerned about the argument that the
default
assumption should be that we change our process even in the absence of
consensus to do so.
Regarding the proposal, I get the impression that people are mostly in
three
camps:
Well, none of these describe my own position, which is that eliminating the
three step process will at a minimum act as an incentive to move more
documents
along. (You, and most others engaging in this debate, routinely neglect the
psychological factors involved.)
I can easily name a dozen RFCs, all currently at proposed, that I for one
will
be strongly incented to work to advance if this step is taken.
At the risk of playing devil's advocate, how will that help? Will the
specifications significantly improve in quality and interoperability improve
as a result?
First of all, since when is improving specifications the sole purpose of the
IETF standards advancement process? As I understand it, the goal behind having
different document statuses is for the labels to tell implementors how well
things are likely to actually work.
In other words, I categorically reject your implied assumption here that the
IETF advancement process only makes sense when specifications are improved
along the way. Plenty of specifications currently at proposed are of sufficient
quality to be full standards right now. Our problem is right now the process is
so onerous few people bother, so the presence of the higher label is useful but
the absence of it is not.
But even if I were to accept your tacit assumptions about the purpose of the
process - which I most assuredly do not - the answer is yes, some and perhaps
all of these specifications will be improved along the way, and at least a
couple are likely to be significantly improved. Features that in hindsight
turned out to be problematic will be removed, prose will be checked and
tightend, etc. etc.
If you think specification advancement doesn't receive this level of scrutiny
and resulting improvement currently, you haven't been paying attention.
Will the blessing of these documents as Internet Standards result in wider
implementation and thus greater benefit to users? (not knowing which RFCs
you're talking about, I can't even guess)
Keith, you know as well as I do that there can be no guarantess that the
Internet will care about anything we do, let alone see value in such
advancements. But given past experience it seems very likely that at least some
benefits along these lines will be accrued.
From my perspective there's little problem with implementing and deploying at
Proposed and having documents stay at Proposed indefinitely, provided we can
ensure that the specifications are of high quality by the time they get to
Proposed. And given that people do tend to implement and deploy at Proposed,
there's only marginal benefit to promoting them to anything else - except on
those occasions where this serves as a carrot to fix bugs in the original spec
that people might otherwise live with. And it's not clear to me that the
proposed change increases the incentive to do either.
And what happens in this world of only proposed standards when, as is often the
case despite all the absurd added scrutiny we now apply to proposed standards,
something problematic slips past us all? The simple fact that we almost always
make changes, and often significant ones, to documents that advance, shows we
don't always get it right. And when this happens what's the alternative? Once
something is approved it can be very difficult to get consensus to move it
historic.
You appear to be assuming that if we stare at stuff long enough and review it
hard enough we'll find all the issues in one step. Sorry, it never worked this
way in the past, and as the complexity of specifications has increased, it
works even less well now than ever before. Specifications have to be tried, and
tried at scale, to tell if they are any good.
Indeed, past experience indicates that the sorts of additional review you have
repeatedly advocoted for in these discussions usually backfires: It has an
uncanny way of turning the process into a beauty contest were important work
gets stifled just because it ran contrary to some higher-up's beliefs about
something. Once again you're failing to take psychological factors into
account, and they *matter*.
Additionally, by simplifying the process, we will gain essential insight
into
where other problems lie. Without such simplification I see no chance at
all at
making progress on any of these issues.
Okay, I can see that as a possibility. Sometimes when undertaking a great
task, it doesn't matter what subtask you pick to do next, as long as you do
something. Momentum is often more important than doing things in order of
importance. My question is then, how many people think that we need to
undertake a great task where our process is concerned, and how many of those
think that given current political conditions, if we undertake such a task,
we're likely to end up with something substantially better than we have now?
(I'm open to the idea but skeptical)
My answer is I have no idea. Our current process is so complex - and
unnecessarily so - that every time we even try and discuss substantial changes
the discussion goes off in about fifty different directions. When it comes to
the really big stuff we can't even agree on where to start, let alone get
consensus on what to try and fix.
So let's please take the small step of simplifying the process a little first,
so perhaps we can get some perspective on the big stuff. Or not - it may well
be that this small step isn't sufficient to gain any sort of perspective, but
I've already given my reasons for believing it's useful in it's own right even
if that does not happen.
1) Even if this is a baby step, it's a step in the right direction. Or
even
if it's not a step in the right direction, taking some step will at least
make it possible to make some changes in our process. Maybe we'll not like
the results of taking this step, but at least then we'll have learned
something, and if the result is clearly worse we'll be motivated to change
it.
(I call this "change for the sake of change")
That last substantially and obviously mischaracterizes this position. In
fact
I strongly recommend that you stop trying to summarize complex position with
cute - and utterly wrong - phrases like this. This is annoying and
quite unhelpful.
There are definitely cases where "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step", I'm just skeptical that that argument applies in this specific
case.
2) Fixing the wrong problem doesn't do anything useful, and will/may serve
as a distraction from doing anything useful.
(I call this "rearranging the deck chairs")
3) People should stop arguing about this and just hold their noses about
it,
because the arguing will make it harder to do anything else in this space.
(I call this "Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia". Ok, that's
probably too harsh, but it's what immediately comes to mind.)
Actually, I think there are a substantial numer of people who believe
exactly
the opposite of this.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Are you saying that there are
a substantial number of people who wish to make it harder to do anything at
all
in this space, so they keep arguing about it? Or something else?
I think a substantial number of people believe there is nonegligable benefit
in doing this. No nose-holding required.
The arguments that people are giving in favor of approving this bother me
more than the proposal itself does. (I'm a firm believer that good
decisions
are highly unlikely to result from flawed assumptions, and flawed
assumptions
often affect many decisions. So challenging a widely-held flawed
assumption is
often more important than challenging any single decision.)
Well, the main argument I'm giving is based on my own perception of the
effect
this will have on myself and similarly minded people as a contributor. If
you
think that assessment is incorrect, then I'm sorry, but I think you're being
extraordinarily foolish.
I think you're in an excellent position to understand how approval or
disapproval of this document will affect your interest in doing work on the
documents you mentioned, and I'm sure you're not the only one who would be
encouraged by such a change to our process.
And IMO that's a good thing.
Ned
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