On Wed 28/Nov/2012 16:18:05 +0100 Keith Moore wrote:
On 11/27/2012 01:00 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
This brings up a question that I have as an AD: A number of times
since I started in this position in March, documents have come to
the IESG that prompted me (or another AD) to look into the document
history for... to find that there's basically no history. We see a
string of versions posted, some with significant updates to the
text, but *no* corresponding mailing list discussion. Nothing at
all. The first we see of the document on the mailing list is a
working group last call message, which gets somewhere between zero
and two responses (which say "It's ready."), and then it's sent to
the responsible AD requesting publication. When I ask the
responsible AD or the document shepherd about that, the response is
that, well, no one commented on the list, but it was discussed in
the face-to-face meetings. A look in the minutes of a few meetings
shows that it was discussed, but, of course, the minutes show little
or none of the discussion. We accept that, and we review the
document as usual, accepting the document shepherd's writeup that
says that the document has "broad consensus of the working group."
So here's my question: Does the community want us to push back on
those situations?
Please, please, please push back on those discussions.
Far too many documents are being represented as WG consensus, and then
IETF consensus, when there's nothing of the sort. This degrades the
overall quality of IETF output, confuses the community of people who
use IETF standards, and potentially does harm to the Internet by
promoting use of protocols that haven't been carefully vetted.
Simply presenting a document at a face-to-face meeting and asking
people to raise hands or hum in approval isn't sufficient. A
necessary condition for IESG consideration of a WG document should be
that several people have posted to the WG mailing list that they've
read it, and that they consider it desirable and sound.
+1, s/several/some/, especially if qualified.
jm2c