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Re: Is this an elephant? [Was: call for ideas: tail-heavy IETF process]

2013-05-16 15:49:41
On 5/16/13 10:01 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 5/16/2013 9:40 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
That's a good question Dave.

The community might like to comment.

On the whole, I am told that if an AD weighs in with her comments during working
group last call, her fearsome personality may overwhelm some of the WG
participants and she may dominate the WG consensus.

Only women ADs? [1]

But seriously...

If Tiresias prophet of Thebes is in your wg, I'd listen.
Is it possible that the same would happen in IETF last call?

I think that the public sway of ADs on the IETF list is less of a risk than on wg mailing lists. And note that my suggestion has ADs waiting to weigh in until community-generated active disagreement with the spec, or its passive agreement, has been established.

Early participation AD's weighing in on draft's generally takes the form of just another participant unless you're asking for an opinion on a process point. wearing different hats on the course of the lifecycle is normal imho. opinion at the mic or on the list is not iesg review. The sponsoring AD (who is presumably the most involved) is not likely the one with the discuss later in the process since they had to do the initial review, put it through the ietf last call and then ballot it, so fundamentally they should have a document they can live with when it gets to that stage.
In any event, the current reality of having an AD weigh in with a a process-blocking Discuss is not exactly /under-/whelming...

Simply put: We are starting with the reality that an AD is going to be expressing their opinions. The question is when and how. It's not going to be /less/ intimidating to have it done as a Discuss.

Contrary to some of the mythology that has been expressed about this, the frequent reality is that the typical wg goal is to clear the Discuss, not really to engage in debate with an AD who is blocking document progress. (I've watched this reality many times over the years.) That is far less healthy than having the AD's concern become part of the /public/ review process.


I agree that this would bring the tail forward a little (not a lot).
I don't believe it would reduce AD work-load (which is another issue entirely).

Yes, the timing change is small.  But the context change is enormous.


Lastly, I think I disagree with you about "really serious" IETF last call comments coming in the first few days. It seems to me that we also get an number

Some, sure. But I said it was an efficiency hack. The goal isn't for it to be perfect, just helpful.

d/


[1] The question of proper referential language is a continuing surprise to me, given that the currently-popular conventions create more problems than they solve -- and it's even a question on a PSAT preparatory example that I saw yesterday. There's a pretty straightforward alternative that works nearly all the time:

   http://dcrocker.net/#gender




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