Scott,
Thanks.
You have summarized the reasons why I get the creeps each time a
suggestion is made that we lower the expectations for
area-specific technical skill in the AD job, turn the AD role
into one of process management and checking, or give WGs final
authority over standardizing decisions (all of which, at least
on this dimension, amount to the same thing). However, while
performing or ensuring cross-area review is the most important
aspect of the IETF's almost-unique approach, a strong and
technical AD review role also provides some protection against a
WG that becomes dominated by a narrow set of organizations or
interests and that therefore produces results that are favorable
to those interests rather than the Internet more broadly.
Standards bodies that do not have technical review beyond the WG
(or equivalent) that develops the proposal typically deal with
that issue by scrutinizing WG membership and insisting on
various statistical measures of balance. No one has figured out
how to make that work (insofar as it works at all) without
organizational, rather than, individual membership and
participation, so the implications are fairly wide-ranging.
best,
john
--On Sunday, November 15, 2015 15:10 -0500 "Scott O. Bradner"
<sob(_at_)sobco(_dot_)com> wrote:
Maybe I missed it, but I do not recall seeing mention in this
thread of a significant aspect of an ADs role – reviewing
documents from outside there area – i.e., the
cross-jurisdictional review step that the IESG review
represents.
This is a major differentiator between the IETF and most other
IT standards development organizations. In most other
organizations the only technical expertise applied to a
proposal comes from within a working group (working party
etc) – a group that will always have a limited scope of
expertise
The IESG's cross-area review ensures that proposals undergo
review by experts in areas that will likely not be represented
within a particular working group.
Documents, no matter how clearly written, produced by an
individual working group, no matter the level of subject
matter expertise, can benefit from careful review by experts
who have expertise outside the scope of the people
participating in the working group.
When I was an AD (a rather long time ago now) I saw many
documents where inadequate attention had been paid to
security, congestion control, manageability, etc.
i.e., it is not sufficient to say, as has been said during
this thread, that the onus should fall on a working group
chair to ensure the quality of the documents that are
produced by a working group, the best documents can be made
better, in terms of being used on the Internet, by the
cross-area review done by the IESG.