Keith, SM, --On Sunday, March 24, 2024 12:46 -0400 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... >> As a comment on interim meetings, there is a decision by the >> IAB at: >> https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/iab/appeals/artifact/39 A decision I deliberated at length about whether I should take to the ISOC BoT and, when I decided against it, whether I should post a note to this list about why not and what I saw as the broader principles. If I did neither of those things whether I should send a note to the IESG on that subject. I concluded that neither of the first two would be in the best interests of the community and that the latter would probably be a waste of their time and mine. As a personal request, let's not reopen that discussion: the appeal was ultimately about a detail and potential small/isolated fix to it. It the IESG and IAB did not focus on the principle, that was probably at least partially my fault as author of the appeal. I continue to agree with Pete that we should try to focus on broader principles and not spend more time on those details. I could have filed a second appeal that focused more clearly on the principle, but I did consult with a few people before making my decisions and came away with the sense that the IESG would reject such an appeal either on the grounds that there were no concrete examples they had not decided on already or that the procedures allow for appeals against actions but not against necessarily vague principles. And I probably would have agreed with them on both of those likely conclusions. More on appeals in general below. > I have pretty strong opinions about interim meetings based on > my own experience while on IESG, in which one WG in particular > was holding interim meetings without broad public notice and > only to the WG mailing list. I found that this WG was > hostile to outside input and that this was detrimental to the > quality of their output. I still find that WG's output to > be of very low quality and to impair interoperability to this > very day. And I believe that the complexity of the spec > that they produced discourages additional implementation which > might improve reliability for users. And here the obvious question --for you and others who knew about that case but also not one that I think would be productive to visit on this list after so much time had passed-- is why that WG was not told to choose between stopping that behavior or being shut down. There was precedent even then for shutting down WGs that were not doing their work in a way that was open and productive for the Internet. That precedent was not limited to the one instance that had become public and notorious. > But on rereading IESG's current guidance, the only thing that > really bugs me is that they permit frequent online interim > meetings and that they only consider the current set of WG > participants' interests, and not so much the interests of > potential participants from outside the current WG. Again, that is what that appeal was intended to be about. Whether the IESG, and, even more the IAB, correctly interpreted and responded to it that way is a separate question and one very much tied to my comments and request above. If that appeal and response are really tied up with a principle that used to be important but from which we have drifted away, then back to Pete's comments. However, I believe (and it is tied to another one of those principles) that the appeals process has become deeply flawed over the years and is tending toward being ineffective. In retrospect, our first big mistake was calling them "appeals" rather than something more like "requests for reconsideration" or "requests for additional review". The second may have been that, perhaps because things were running smoothly and the community was somewhat exhausted after POISED, there were two few of them early on and too few since. The result of infrequency and some of them being perceived as just annoyances was that they started being perceived as A Big Deal and at least some ADs (possibly more as time went on) began to view them as an attack to be defended against (maybe even for the IAB to defend the IESG against) rather than a request to think again about issues, especially issues that had not obviously been considered the first time. If we are at a point that leadership bodies can proudly announce at plenaries that there have been no appeals as if that were a major accomplishment (the one last week is certainly not the first time), then we may be passing the point that appeals are a useful tool for encouraging reconsideration as surely as recalls (at least beyond the threat of one) are no longer useful tools to deal with bad behavior by people the leadership. Again, referring to Pete's comments, those are cultural shifts, not things we can (or should try to) patch by small procedural adjustments and, yes, I personally and with no disrespect to any individual, especially those who have been swept along by the tide, I think the shift stinks. > I > continue to believe that IETF needs to facilitate broad > participation and needs to discourage working groups operating > as effectively closed clubs, by whatever mechanisms they use > (including making disparaging remarks about non-regular > participants who show up at meetings, as I've seen done). > I don't think that the current set of WG participants are the > only set of potential participants whose interests need to be > considered in making scheduling decisions for a WG. I also > don't think that mere "discussion" of proposed meetings with > the responsible AD is adequate, but I expect that in practice > a WG is unlikely to meet over the AD's objection. Again, strongly agreed and close to why I started this thread. As a matter of principle, I don't care whether such discussions are initiated by the WG Chair or the AD as long as the AD has ample warning that there might be an issue worth discussing and that, if they initiate the discussion and/or then either they or the WG leadership decide to make the discussion and its conclusions public, that is not considered bad behavior. Put differently and again drawing closer to the discussion I've been having with Pete and SM (and them with each other), I think we used to have broad principles that openness and transparency about WG actions, discussions, and decisions were in the best interests of the IETF and a better Internet. If I'm consistent with that principle, I have no objections to a WG that consists only of membership hand-picked by the chairs and meeting in complete secret... as long as the community is aware that is going on, and that, if the responsible AD is allowing that (whether through agreement, indifference, or ignorance), we have an appeals procedure that works without being seen as an attack on the IESG. Fortunately, I don't think we have ever had a WG that extreme (a few design teams notwithstanding) but I'd like to continue to believe that the principle is well enough established and agreed that WGs who went even a little bit down that path could be held accountable to the community. Finally as the sort of specific example I've been asked to give, I have seen cases in the last few years in which a document has gone into IETF LC after the WG reached internal consensus (occasionally very rough in both senses of that term) but the shepherd's report has gone to the IESG claiming no significant dissent or controversy. If Last Calls or IESG review are to be meaningful, at least the IESG and preferably the community are entitled to know what the controversies were and whether those who dissented or supported an alternate position within the WG agreed with the solution in the spec (rather than, e.g., being overwhelmed or dropping out of the WG instead). Again, the principle about full and accurate disclosure in those reports (and a culture that supports it) are important, especially if the IESG is going to rely on them, but I cannot imagine any procedure or rule that we could plausibly adopt that would prevent the problem. best, john
