--On Friday, October 18, 2013 17:29 -0700 Randy Presuhn
<randy_presuhn(_at_)mindspring(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
If indeed a large time sink is the time needed to DISCUSS
work, increasing the size of the IESG won't help. Having
multiple IESGs might give better scalability. Even splitting
the current IESG into two (one AD from each area into each
IESG) might provide better parallelism. Of course, doing
this would require us to finally disabuse ourselves of any
notions that "the" IESG really understands everything or is
in total control of anything.
Whether on this hypothesis or most others, it seems to me that
splitting up the IESG horizontally (each Area represented in
each IETF) or vertically (half the Areas to one, half to the
other), with or without a significant increase in the number of
total IESG members, would almost certainly create several new
problems (some of these have been mentioned by others):
* The ability for the IESG to work as a team (and, fwiw, to be
held accountable as a team) would be much reduced. For that
purpose, the IESG is probably very close to the maximum size.
Doubling it would fundamentally change the nature of the
process, with or without horizontal or vertical splits. As two
obvious examples, its size is probably already above the maximum
for real conversations with the community in plenaries. Now
imagine something over 32 people on the stage in a plenary and,
if there were either split, figure out whether we need one IESG
Chair or two, which IESG the IAB Chair participates in, and so
on. Or perhaps we should have three plenaries instead of two?
* Cross-area review would probably be weakened. It is rare for
even two ADs in an Area to have the same perspectives and
knowledge. When they do, it is, IMO, a failure elsewhere in the
system -- diversity of perspectives, even within an Area, is a
strength. A vertical split would mean little contact between
top and bottom layer ADs and some "interesting" questions about
what to do about, e.g., Security.
* A horizontal split would make ADs in an Area filling in for
each other in the event of illness or overload and moving WGs
back and forth to compensate for changes in load much more
difficult.
* Any split (or even a significant growth in size) would create
(or enhance) a management nightmare around the issues that the
IESG really needs to reach agreement on as a group. We probably
don't want different review or "voting" policies based on
semi-random decisions about where a WG or Area falls. The issue
of what to do about Chairs and Liaisons is mentioned above.
In addition, shifting more review burden and responsibility to
directorates, etc., rather that having those reviews be advisory
to relevant ADs about issues to which they need to pay special
attention blows up accountability because decision-making
authority would effectively shift from people selected by the
Nomcom to self-selected community members. That could easily
lead to more appeals (appeals are usually an incredibly
time-consuming process) or having the IETF in a very difficult
position if there were ever a claim of impropriety in the
decision-making about at standard.
If a split is wanted, there is another way to do it, one that
would introduce a different set of new or more complex issues
than the above and address the scaling problem differently. See
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-stds-review-panel/
for an example of one such proposal. Disclaimer: I haven't
looked at that document in years and don't know whether I would
still support it,
best,
john