On 05/14/2013 06:30 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 5/14/2013 3:12 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
On May 14, 2013, at 6:00 PM, "Joel M. Halpern" <jmh(_at_)joelhalpern(_dot_)com>
wrote:
At the same time, discussions do have to be resolvable. If there
is no way to address it, then it is not a discuss. But "required
to clar" is the wrong picture as far as I can tell.
Exactly right. It would actually be pretty presumptuous for an AD
to say what is required to clear the DISCUSS. That would tend to
imply that the DISCUSS is a directive, not an invitation to, well,
discuss.
It isn't an 'invitation'. It's an exercise in political authority by
blocking progress of the document.
It's a mistake to inherently define "progress" in terms of advancing the
document. Many documents should not be published in the form in which
they first reach IESG; a few documents that reach IESG should probably
never be published.
We came up with the term "Discuss" when I was an AD because, at the
time, the IESG had little authority and wanted to encourage a
constructive tone; we didn't want to sound like we were saying 'no'.
And of course, that's still everyone's preference. But the reality is
that the imposition of the Discuss is an assertion that changes are
being required.
That's neither what Discuss means, or what it should mean. Though I've
seen many cases where WGs or authors demanded that ADs tell them what to
fix. It's understandable that they should want clarity from the AD,
and yet fixing the document is not the AD's job.
For reference, that milder uses of Discuss, which is something akin to
"I'd like something clarified" does not require a Discuss. It requires
a query to the working group and some dialogue.
Disagree. I've seen a number of cases where informal conversations
caused more problems and delay than voting DISCUSS. By the time a
document has reached final IESG review, it's generally much better to
have the level of formality and transparency that comes with voting
DISCUSS.
Of course we have to _try_ to say what we think would
clear the discuss, but I don't think we can go beyond that; it's
virtually impossible for us to have complete information.
That makes no sense. The AD is the one choosing to block progress. It
will be the AD who decides to clear the discuss.
I disagree in the strongest possible terms.
If an AD believes that there is something wrong with a document, even
something that needs clarification, the proper thing for the AD is to
vote DISCUSS. This is NOT "choosing to block progress". Publishing
broken or unclear documents is not progress.
Keith