Dave,
The fact that you had to reach back 2.5 years, to a frankly rather obscure
document that came from the IAB and not the broader IETF, demonstrates my
point that we lacked meaningful context
You asked for context and I provided a context. We can certainly debate how
meaningful it is. There are obvious arguments that we can make against its
meaningfulness. But I disagree with your characterisation of the most recent
RFC (6020) on topic from the organisation that in the IETF ecosystem has IANA
oversight in its charter (per RFC 2580, a BCP) as "obscure". In any case I
don't want to argue too much, because I _do_ agree with your larger points:
They don't set work agendas. They don't control overall budgets. They don't
hire and fire people. For almost all of the formal IETF 'decisions' they
participate in, it is with exactly one vote in a group, and not more
authority than that.
...
IETF leaders are best viewed as facilitators, rather than leaders. They do
huge amounts of organizing, coordinating, interfacing, in the classic style
of the cliche'd 'shepherding cats'.
Although I would claim that while there is no traditional "leading" at the
IETF, I do think that IETF facilitators do occasionally lead in the sense of
suggesting paths forward, identifying potential challenges, etc.
And I of course would love to have this:
We need to find some sort of language that gives constructive guidance and
constraint about public representations of the IETF, by our 'leaders'.
Jari