I've been told by some current WG chairs that there's a tension between the
goal of being a neutral party (for consensus leadership) and the goal of
improving quality of the drafts. If there are organizational messages that
discourage the chairs from using their technical acumen to ensure the
review is well targeted and far-reaching enough (as is needed especially
for problem drafts), this could account for some of the quality issues.
I'd like to see the WG chairs very technically empowered, while also
trusted to be fair when they manage consensus. If they can't do both, it
may be hard especially hard to guide/lead/manage the WG when dealing with
drafts with quality problems.
Allison