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Re: Less Corporate Diversity

2013-03-23 03:21:08
Martin

I don't want to prolong this sub-sub-sub-thread but really I can't
leave this unchallenged:


On 23/03/2013 04:46, Martin Rex wrote:
Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Martin Rex wrote:
My impression of todays IESG role, in particular taking their
balloting rules and their actual balloting results into account,
is more of a "confirming body" of work that happened elsewhere
(primarily in the IETF, typically in IETF WGs, but also individual or
interest groups submissions from elsewhere, though the latter mostly
for (re)publication as informational).

IMHO, the IESG is not (and maybe never was?) a committee where _each_
member reviews _all_ of the work, where _each_ forms his very own opionion,
and where all of them caste a VOTE at the end, so that the diversity
within that committee would be vitally beneficial (to anything).
I think you've misinterpreted the IESG procedures a bit. The definition
of a NO OBJECTION ballot in the IESG ranges from "I read it, and I have
no problem with it" to "I listened to the discussion, and I have no problem."

I don't think so.

I do think so, and if you didn't notice, I cut and pasted those phrases
from the IESG's own web page.


When I had a phone call with Russ Housley in early 2010, one of the
things I said was that considering the amount of document that pass
through the IESG, I would assume that not every AD was reading every
document and that each AD might be reading only about 1/4 of them,
and he replied that this could be near the real numbers.

Who knows? When I was in the IESG, I would have said more like 50%
but obviously YMMV. How is that incompatible with stating the NO OBJECTION
ranges between "I read it" and "I listened to the discussion"?



It's impossible to say objectively which of these extremes predominates,
but when I was General AD, I tried to at least speed-read every draft,
and studied the Gen-ART reviews carefully. Individual ADs vary in their
habits according to workload, but my sense is that there is a strong
sense of collective responsibility and definitely not a sense of
rubber stamping.

I do not think that the IESG is actively rubber stamping, and I
know of a few past events where the IESG actively resisted to such
attempts.

However, the ballot process is made to err towards publication
of a document.  How often does the IESG *not* publish documents,
and why?

Why does that statistic matter? The fact that the IESG is actively
and critically reviewing drafts is the end-stop for the main
technical review, which is *of course* performed by the WG (except
for the relatively rare non-WG drafts). If the IESG habitually
rejected documents, it would tell us that the ADs and WG Chairs
concerned were doing a lousy job.

Considering the effort it took to convince IESG not to take an
action / publish a document (IIRC draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-to-historic-04.txt)
then I'm much less convinced that having a ballot procedure that fails
towards action/publication is such a good idea.

That's a case I know intimately of course, having been author of the
rival draft as well as the original 6to4 spec. I'd say it's a case that
proves that our process is robust and that the IESG is doing exactly
what it should - in that case, concluding that the draft, having received
a pretty rough consensus in v6ops, did not achieve rough consensus
in the IETF as a whole. It was a very close call, and there are still
many people who think it was wrong (as you know if you watch
the traffic on ipv6-ops(_at_)lists(_dot_)cluenet(_dot_)de).

    Brian


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