--On Friday, 10 October, 2014 10:33 -0500 Pete Resnick
<presnick(_at_)qti(_dot_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> wrote:
--On Thursday, October 09, 2014 20:59 -0400 Michael StJohns
<mstjohns(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net> wrote:
Having a generalist is uncharted waters.
Not really. The IETF chair is by definition something of a
generalist and usually has work in more than one area during
their participation.
Not a good parallel. The WG management responsibilities of the
IETF chair are extremely small. Jari has his first WG in his
tenure as chair, and AFAICT Russ didn't have any. And also
AFAICT the IETF chair does not manage technical work from WGs.
I'd go further. The original conception was that the IETF Chair
would have _no_ specific WG oversight responsibility, only
responsibility for oversight and management. Mike will remember
the period when the IAB appointed the IESG Chair and the IETF
Chair appointed the other ADs, who served at his pleasure. An
inference of "generalist" from that would be entirely
reasonable, but it is not because of the profile of WGs, work in
more than one area, or even, IMO, a specific part of the job
description. THe so-called General Area was created entirely as
a process workaround to make process WGs fit somewhere in the
conventional IESG-WG relationship structure.
In reality, since 1992, there has rarely (if ever) actually been
a General Area as an Area, just an administrative/ terminology
convenience to make some of the written procedures work. To my
knowledge, the area has never held a meeting, never had a
directorate, never had any specific coordination among WGs (even
when there have been more than zero or one of them).
IMO, the above, including the whole idea of the "General Area"
demonstrates our long tradition of being flexible about The
Rules in order to get things done. I note that an alternative
to the General Area concept (clearly falling within the IESG's
authority to create and define Areas) would have been to simply
modify 2025, 2028, etc., except process WGs from the Area model.
IIR, the IESG chose the former as simply more expedient than
opening the basic process documents and, again IIR, no one
objected.
To be clear, there are several things that persuade me that the
proposed course of action is not optimal. I believe, however,
that modulo the potential for an appeal, it is within the IESG's
authority and precedent to do it.
john