Subject: Re: Clarification of my comment on giving up on process issues

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:23:47 +0200

John C Klensin wrote:

> generally, what those types of proposal need, independent
> of the process-change model we use, is enough community
> discussion to permit making a determination that people care
> and that there is sufficient consensus to move forward.

FWIW, I read these drafts up to the point where you wrote
"NomCom".  Because that's "only" about the paying members I
didn't look further.  I'd agree that it's odd that some folks,
in the "recall" example IESG members, are excluded from an
otherwise simple procedure - but apparently it's never used,
so fixing the procedure might be pointless (?)

> The broader community shows little signs of caring

When I read articles on lists like newtrk / pesci / techspec
where I'm not subscribed (see my other article about the list
management oddities wrt IMA and TOOLS), and all I've to say
is "excellent idea" (e.g. about the decruft experiment), then
I won't bother to subscribe only to post an "add me".

In one newtrk case (auto-demotion from PS to historic) I sent
my two cents as PM, and got a reply that this doesn't really
help, therefore I didn't try that approach again.

> (i)   Do nothing, on the ground that, if enough people
>       don't care, nothing is severely enough broken.

> (ii)  Go ahead and made the change, partially on the
>       theory that, if it turns out to be significantly worse,
>       _that_ will bring the community out to comment.

> (iii) Continue thrashing.  Thrashing differs from (i) in
>       that (i) doesn't use up community cycles and raise the
>       frustration level.  Thrashing does both.

Obviously (iii) isn't ideal, but for some newtrk proposals the
outcome (zero) is fine from my POV.  The "three steps" can make
sense (e.g. STD 66).  It's against human nature to get it right
in less steps.  Three is a minimum - seriously, who cares what
I might think about this point ?  It's irrelevant.  One radical
idea could be to weight proposals by RFCs published (you'd end
up with a kind of veto right then :-), but probably that's what
all folks do silently for themselves, so we need no RFC for it.

> if we can't even move forward smoothly with 3933 experiments
> where there seems to be some interest, may be better than
> (ii).    But it is, IMO, a fairly sad state of affairs.

IMHO Sam's proposal was meant to help Randy and Harald (as the
list-moms of two affected lists), and the IESG with a certain
"situation" (RfC 3934 not good enough, 3683 too disruptive) -
as it turned out the IESG didn't need this and went with 3683.

The IESG is working like the Holy See, that's no new invention.
At least it's mostly transparent (thanks to the tracker).  The
experiment with public transcriptions was less useful, critical
topics were blanked out, the rest only reflected what's already
visible - thanks to the tracker and the minutes.

                           Bye, Frank

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Ietf mailing list
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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 10:42:58 -0500

I'm confused on a minor point...
> visible - thanks to the tracker and the minutes.

If "public transcriptions" means IESG telechat narrative minutes 
(http://www.ietf.org/IESG/iesg-narrative.html), I am one of the people who 
records them, joining Marshall Eubanks sometime after US Thanksgiving last 
year.

I can remember three times when I was asked to stop typing; twice for 
discussions about what to do with working groups that are years late on 
their milestones with WG chairs who aren't answering e-mail, and once on 
discussions about an appeal.

I have gotten corrections from two or three ADs (Bert most often, Ted less 
often, maybe a couple of ADs who have sent corrections once), and usually 
these have taken the form of providing background so that someone doesn't 
have to review previous minutes and mailing list discussions in order to 
understand what was said in the meeting.

There are still things I wish IESG was more transparent about, but the 
narrative minutes aren't like the US Congress where people insert speeches 
they never made, at least in my opinion (and the scribes actually send in 
the final version to be posted, so no one is dorking with the text after 
we've seen it).

Both IESG and the scribes listen very seriously to feedback about how to 
improve them (current discussions have been about how to get them posted as 
quickly as possible), so - Frank and others - please continue to tell us 
what is, and is not, useful.

Thanks,

Spencer the scribe

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 19:00:31 +0200

Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> If "public transcriptions" means IESG telechat narrative
> minutes (http://www.ietf.org/IESG/iesg-narrative.html)

Yes, that's what I meant.  I looked into this because I was
interested in some then pending appeals (3066bis + SenderID).

> I can remember three times when I was asked to stop typing;
> twice for discussions about what to do with working groups
> that are years late on their milestones with WG chairs who
> aren't answering e-mail

[...] Either I missed that, or I confused it with the appeals:

> and once on discussions about an appeal.

> IESG and the scribes listen very seriously to feedback about
> how to improve them (current discussions have been about how
> to get them posted as quickly as possible)

"Quickly" is fine, but with some patience the later published
terse minutes are very similar - if I know precisely what they
are talking about I can guess what's missing, and otherwise I
probably have no business to understand what was going on. :-)
 
                          Bye, Frank

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 16:28:45 -0400

>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]> writes:

    Frank> IMHO Sam's proposal was meant to help Randy and Harald (as
    Frank> the list-moms of two affected lists), and the IESG with a
    Frank> certain "situation" (RfC 3934 not good enough, 3683 too
    Frank> disruptive) - as it turned out the IESG didn't need this
    Frank> and went with 3683.

My proposal was meant to give the community some room to hash out the
mailing list issue and to try and encourage more positive discussion.
I've been swamped by day job issues and by some technical work within
the IESG and have not gotten back to it.  I will try and get the
necessary consensus.  I do strongly support my proposal and/or
something more targeted at a BCP.  I'm quite sure I'd resign rather
than go through another non-trivial PR-action under the current
procedures.

--Sam

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:30:00 +0200

>as it turned out the IESG didn't need this and went with 3683.

Dear Frank,
having won and completed everything I needed (except two appeals to 
come), familly priorities, the desire to give time to time, and some 
calendar timing made me neither comment nor appeal yet. I explained 
this to the IESG. Everything will be carried in due time. The real 
problems (IETF ethic, IANA registry nature, deny of consensus, 
respect of people, minority status, IETF user representation, IETF 
legitimacy, IESG legal responsibilities, political nature of IETF 
under RFC 3935, etc. etc....) have not been discussed.

Without this debate I think Sam's Draft is premature and will be 
fruitless for the IETF. It is also of a certain importance to the 
interest of such a debate to identify if the IETF wants to continue 
being an acknowledged SSDO, or if it wants to become an RFC 3744 
afinity group driven lobby. The way the IESG respects the WG-LTRU RFC 
3066 Bis consensus will help evaluating this. The way the IAB will 
address my appeal will also teach us about the way RFC 3869 is to be 
understood by non-commercial R&D entities.

jfc