--On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:40 -0800 Melinda Shore
<melinda(_dot_)shore(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 7/22/15 11:02 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
(1) We did not hesitate to shut them down if they were
not productive. I don't want a rigid rule because I
think we all know that, in practice, some WGs move at a
different pace than others, but it is important that we
be able to recognize "not meeting expectations and
making reasonable progress" and act on it.
My mental model for how-things-work in the IETF is based on
the working group secretaries situation - there was a sense
that working group chairs were overloaded and in some cases
not doing their jobs, and rather than remove a non-functioning
chair or add another chair, a decision was made to add a new
role (wg secretary) and an effort to formalize that role.
That is to say, when things aren't working we tend to add
more structure and more layers rather than removing structure
and layers. Because this tends to happen, I am going to find
it difficult to support a process change that is structured
around an assumption that when things go badly groups will
be shut down and chairs will be fired.
I was trying to be positive and optimistic and I hope the recent
experience with ARCHICE marks a turnaround, but I certainly
agree that, if we cannot, in practice, shut WGs down and do so
efficiently and with little fuss, this whole idea should be
considered a non-started. FWIW, I personally believe that this
long and complex process for creating WGs evolved precisely
because we could not shut a WG, once created, down and because
people believed that having a WG created entitled them to
produce standards and have them approved. If those are our
beliefs in actual practice, then the only choice is to try to
keep WGs that might turn disfunctional from being created.
I basically like this proposal, although I'm going to tend
to like any proposal that reduces leadership workload and
that pushes a chartering decision back beyond the point at
which a typical working group transitions from initial
enthusiasm to committed core.
I would add Eric's desire to get WG's started before people run
out of steam and a desire to spend time getting work done (if
possible) rather than speculating on whether it will be
successful to that list.
But I think we need to deal
with the IETF as it is, which means a growing core of
professional standardizers among both the participant and
leadership (suggesting that people will basically work on
anything, regardless of actual utility) and a predisposition
to add goo rather than to remove it and against saying "no"
to established efforts and chairs (which also goes to
your fourth criterion, that sunk effort is not a guarantee of
publication or standardization).
Yep.
thanks,
john