----- Original Message -----
From: "Pete Resnick" <presnick(_at_)qti(_dot_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
To: "Stephen Farrell" <stephen(_dot_)farrell(_at_)cs(_dot_)tcd(_dot_)ie>
Cc: <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: Content-free Last Call comments
It's interesting to see that people are interpreting me to mean I want
more text. I don't. I want less. Save your breath. There is no reason to
send one line of support, and it only encourages the view that we're
voting. Details below.
<tp>
Seems to me that there are more points of view on this thread than there
are members of the IESG, in which case, to help followers of this list,
perhaps they, when instigating a Last Call, should do as some WG Chairs
do when instigating WG Last Call, spell out that expressions of support
from those that have read it are welcome - or not, as the case may be.
Thus the AD might add that any e-mail containing "+1" in the body will
be filtered into a spam trap and discarded without being read.
Tom Petch
</tp>
Specifically on Stephen's message:
On 6/10/13 7:36 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
I think you err when you say this:
A statement such as the above is almost entirely useless to me as an
IESG member trying to determine consensus. It is content-free.
In fact, you do know Russ. If you did not, then the above would be
far closer to correct. But in reality you do know a lot more than
you claim below. With overwhelming probability, your choice #2
applies and I'm very surprised you don't also think that. If it
made a significant difference and I wasn't sure I'd ask Russ to
clarify. For me, I read Russ' mail and I concluded he meant #2.
And I'm confident in that conclusion.
So I'm really bemused when you say that you don't know how to
interpret Russ' mail.
Let's separate out a few issues. There's what the message means itself,
there's its usefulness and how much weight it should be given, and then
there's what's problematic about it. I think you've conflated a few
things.
As you know, on the earlier message I called out on the IESG list, I
guessed wrong that the sender was claiming choice #3 (that is, I
thought, incorrectly, that the sender disagreed with a recent argument
against publication, but simply didn't explain why). In fact in that
case, not only wasn't it choice #4, it was also neither choice #1 (an
implementer claiming implementation) nor choice #2 (an expert on the
topic), my other two guesses, but rather a generally smart IETFer who
thought the work seemed like a good idea. So I'm a little disinclined to
guess on motives. In the case of Russ's message, I did guess it was
choice #2, but I wasn't really sure.
But let's separate what Russ meant from the weight it should be given.
The message was that a person (let's presume with some expertise in the
area) had read it. So what? Didn't this document go through a WG?
Weren't a good bunch of experts already reading and reviewing this
document? If this was during the WG discussion and the chairs solicited
some final check reviews, *maybe* the message could have some use. But
during IETF Last Call? Even if the message was sent because it was
trying to say, "I'm an expert on this stuff and it looks technically
sound", is that going to change anything that the IESG should do about
the document? I just think at Last Call, these statements of support are
either harmless-but-useless or they are nefarious.
Declaring that mail problematic also seems quite purist to me.
I always find it amusing that when Stephen and I disagree, it's almost
always because he presumes I want purity (and usually a new process),
which I don't, and it seems to me that he wants no rules-of-thumb at all
and that everything should be on a case-by-case basis. (I guess that
means that I'm into purity, where Stephen has no principles. ;-) ) I
think general principles are a fine thing, and we should try to stick to
them, but I've got no interest in purity.
The single piece of mail isn't problematic at all. As I said, probably
harmless but useless. But the overall impression it gives *is*
problematic. It encourages the view that we are voting, that a simple
statement of support is important to our process. (What really set my
hair on end was the "I support publication" bit. That always sounds like
a vote for a new RFC. From Russ, I have a pretty good idea that he
didn't mean it that way, but it's a poor formulation and not what we
should be encouraging.) It also indicates that during Last Call, we want
to hear that a document is getting reviewed. I would like to presume
that documents get serious reviews in the WG, and that Last Call time is
for people who haven't been participating in the WG to do a final check,
letting us know if there's something *wrong*. If the document wasn't
getting good review in the WG and needs statements of support at Last
Call time, something has seriously failed earlier in the process. The
chair or responsible AD should have been saying early on, "Dear Expert,
can you please have a read over this document and see if it's sane."
Last Call is the wrong time for that to happen. This just encourages
more of the tail-heavy process that we discussed earlier.
At the same time I agree we do not want a procession of +1 mails.
Right. And having senior members of the community doing so will
encourage such behavior in the future.
But then we won't get that for this draft. And if we did get that
for any draft, some IETF participants (probably incl. you and I)
would notice that and query it or object.
I'd rather have all of us crusty folks model good behavior rather than
having to complain about bad behavior later, especially when we'll get
responses like, "But the chair did it." We've already seen a couple of
comments to my message from non-crusty-folks indicating that any +1 is
just dandy. Blech.
Lastly, I think evaluating IETF LC messages only in terms
of how they help the IESG evaluate consensus or not is wrong.
Those messages are for and from the IETF community. So if
e.g. some renowned NFS person who's hardly known to the IESG
were to have sent an equivalent message, that might have been
quite good input that Martin or Spencer could have translated for
you. And that's just fine. And it would be fine if Russ' mail
had been directed not at the IESG but at some other part of the
community.
So this is the most interesting argument. But I would say that requiring
this kind of interpretation/translation is problematic as a general rule
when the messages are going to the IETF list in response to a Last Call.
If a renowned NFS person is doing a review of an NFS document, I think
that's great. And I think that's helpful to Martin or Spencer. But if
all they're going to say is, "I don't have any concerns", it doesn't
seem to me to be that useful a piece of info on the IETF list at Last
Call time. Again, at best it encourages the idea that just because Über
NFS person endorses the document, that weighs in its favor. The
important thing to hear at Last Call time are objections, not
endorsements. As a note to the IESG saying, "Just in case you didn't
think this got review from the right people before, I, Über NFS person,
hereby say that I reviewed it and have no problem with it", that has
some content, but it does indicate that we are waiting until too late in
the process to be thinking about such things.
So bottom line, I think you're wrong, Russ' mail was not content-free.
Yeah, you haven't convinced me.
PS: Yes, this is a not-very-good academic accusing an employee
of an industrial behemoth of excess purity. Go figure:-)
I'll note that I hide in a small R&D corner of my industrial behemoth,
mostly teaching classes to other engineers. You, on the other hand,
probably still write code. :-)
pr
--
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478