Dave,
On 2014-02-12 22:51, Dave Cridland wrote:
Calls for adoption are particularly interesting cases, because if
there's no response, then as chairman I have to assume there's no
interest. This could be because of lack of time, of course, but if
merely checking the draft over for adoption isn't worthy of effort, then
I can't really expect that once adopted, people will suddenly find the
time to do serious work.
I think there are a couple of questions around that scenarion - wg
poll met by silence.
- the first is of course why a draft that there are no interest for
ever were poll, at least the chair who started the poll must have
thought that the draft had a chance to become a working group
draft, why would it otherwise be polled
- if there are a participants in the working group, my guess is that
there are 1.5a opinions what silence mean; my take ii is the wg chair
to know the wg well enough to tell why people are silent
There are a number of tricky positions around slience:
First, there are those that won't bother to say anything unless they
have objections making the draft a wg doc.
Second, a number of people, quite easily defined does not say anything
if the believe that the draft being polled will do no harm if it is
accepted (there might be an overlap between group 1 and 2)
Third, there are those that genuinely believe that silence means
agreement, i.e. if I don't say anything at a wg poll it means that
I agree
Fourth there are that have not read the draft and therefore (quite
sensible) don't respond
Five, there are those that are opposed to make the draft a working
group document, but are afraid if they say that they are opposed they
will start a discussion that leads to that the document in the end
will get accepted
Six, those who are silent because a colleague and friend are one of
the co-authors of the draft, but that would have been opposed under
circumstances.
Seven there are those that are in favor, but fear that if they say
so it will generate more work for themselves
Eight, there is those who always say something regardless of the
subject, if they are silent it might be an idea to try to find out
why.
And variants thereof, but the point is that to the best of their
abilities wg chairs should know the landscape. Working group rough
consensus is not measured by "hum" or "show of hands" it is called
by the wg chairs using those and other tools.
The other point is that there never are total silence - and yes I admit
that not mails in response is disturbing - but there are some aspect
that chairs hs to consider.
- I assume that there are some discussion on the mailing list before a
a draft is polled, should give a hint on where the wg are
- I assume the wg chairs review and agree on going ahead with the poll
- Then there are the folks that has be asked to read and comment prior
the working group poll, I assume that no wg chair without quite a bit
of discussion would start a wg poll on a document that the reviewers
say is not ready
- And last there are the authors - very likely the folks that understand
the subject best - that says that their draft is ready to become a wg
document
Together this is quite a sizeable group that the wg chair can use to
break the silence.
Explicitly write in the poll that positive opinions are welcome helps
a lot.
Also if there after all no reactions anyway - the poll can always be
extended and a mail sent asking that those who have opinions actually
say so. It is allowed for authors and/or chairs to poke people they know
are up to speed on the subject and have them respond to the poll.
/Loa
--
Loa Andersson email:
loa(_at_)mail01(_dot_)huawei(_dot_)com
Senior MPLS Expert loa(_at_)pi(_dot_)nu
Huawei Technologies (consultant) phone: +46 739 81 21 64