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Re: Content-free Last Call comments

2013-06-10 18:34:22
Hi Pete,
At 13:37 10-06-2013, Pete Resnick wrote:
A month ago, we had another very senior member of the community post just such a message (in that case directly to the IESG) in response to a different Last Call. I took that senior member of the community to task for it. But apparently Russ either disagrees with my complaint or didn't notice that discussion on the IESG list, so I think it's worth airing here in public:

I don't expect IAB or IESG members to be infallible, i.e. they are individuals after all.

A statement such as the above is almost entirely useless to me as an IESG member trying to determine consensus. It is content-free.

Yes.

We don't vote in the IETF, so a statement of support without a reason is meaningless. We should not be encouraging folks to send such things, and having the IAB chair do so is encouraging bad behavior. Had I not known Russ and his particular expertise, I would have no reason to take it into consideration *at all*. We should not have to determine the reputation of the poster to determine the weight of the message. Even given my background knowledge of who Russ is, I cannot tell from that message which one of the following Russ is saying:

The comment was from an individual. The issue is that if you do a blind review of the messages you don't know who sent the message and the only weight you could give is to the content of the message.

I think we should stop with these one-line statements of support. They don't add anything to the consensus call. I'm disappointed that Russ contributed to this pattern.

I agree that one-line statements are not of much use. It's more tedious to write a statement to support a proposal than an objection to it. Non-silent Last Calls usually draw objections. It's going to be difficult to balance that if one-line statements of support (or objections) are not considered in a determination of consensus.

Regards,
-sm