Rob, Apologies for the delay in responding to this. I've been busy with other things and it required some thought. Before I go further, one clarification and an observation about something that probably affects my opinions and perhaps my judgment. (1) The appeals procedure was designed for dealing with technical issues and closely related process ones connected with standards track documents, especially standards track documents originating in IETF WGs. It is no accident that the procedures are defined in RFC 2026, "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3". For those purposes, I agree with you that its workings are still reasonably satisfactory (or better). Over the years, we have adapted it to apply to many types of other decisions, including purely procedural ones. My concerns are almost exclusively with the latter and I should have made that much more clear in my initial note on the subject of appeals. (2) When we got past what was known as the Kobe crisis with the IAB and the POISED process, I believe that the general consensus and understanding in the community was that the IESG (a title inherited from earlier arrangements) was primarily a coordinating body, responsible for keeping a complete overview of IETF activities and for making determinations about community consensus but with minimum power or authority for doing things, especially things of broad significance, top-down. ADs did have significant responsibility and authority over the behavior of "their" WG and were considered accountable for them. Perhaps inevitably, that never entirely worked, but I believe the model was one of the core principles that Pete Resnick and I have referred to. Incidentally, one of the other assumptions that came with that model was that AD would be actively watching the WG for which they were responsible and, if they didn't have time for that and the IESG did not consider increasing its size appropriate, the correct action was to stop chartering new WGs, or allowing existing ones to add new work, until WGs completed their work and were closed down until the workload was acceptable. As Pete suggested, things have changed and, to at least some extent, we have drifted away from principles like that and some of us (including several former ADs) think things worked better "back then". --On Monday, March 25, 2024 10:17 +0000 "Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <rwilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi John, > > In my recent experience, the IESG didn't regard appeals as > big issues or attacks, and they welcomed appeals as an > important and necessary safeguard to ensure checks and > balances and that everyone is following the process. However, > handling appeals properly is time consuming, and like all > things, if it is possible to deal with issues without the > overhead of dealing with a formal appeal then arguably that is > a more efficient use of time, and of course, you acknowledge > that ADs are time poor anyway. I'm glad to hear that. And, of course, it is no accident that the first step in the process for most cases is discussion with the relevant AD in the hope that things can be settled that way without taking up a lot of everyone's time. > In terms of the plenary, I think that it is useful for the > IESG/IAB to report on the number of appeals that they have > received and processed. It would be surprising, at least to > me, if the IETF chair had said "Unfortunately there have > been no appeals in the last cycle" … so, being pleased > that there were no appeals since IETF 118 seems unsurprising, > and I don't think that this messaging is intended to > indicate the appeals are bad and should be avoided. I may have misunderstood the comment, but it did sound self-congratulatory to me. As a bit of data to be included in a report that is reasonable. At the same time, there are many other things that are only announced if they happen and not mentioned if they don't. As an extreme example, I don't recall the LLC report ever calling out the fact that we didn't run out of cookies at the meeting even though I am quite confident that, had we run out, there would have been a plenary discussion about it. > It also does not surprise me when appeals fail, particularly > if it relates to an issue that the IESG/IAB are already > familiar with and hence will have already considered the > options carefully before reaching their initial decision. Of > course, it can always be the case that there are some factors > that they didn't sufficiently consider or give a different > weight to, or the outcome of the original decision will have a > wider impact beyond what they may have initially considered, > and here I think that the appeals process is particularly > useful. Indeed. But, depending on how the decision was reached, it may also be where the appeals process is suspect. Consider two possibilities, both exaggerated a bit: * A proposed policy is developed in the community, with the IESG watching. The IESG issues a Last Call, evaluates the community discussion, and, based on that discussion, either puts the proposed policy in place or explains your concerns and iterates. * A proposed policy is developed within the IESG, possibly discussed with the IAB and/or people on a few select mailing lists whose participation is representative of activists on particular topics but not IETF participants in general (tools-discuss and admin-discuss come immediately to mind). The IESG then announces the policy but tells the community that, if they have comments, they are welcome to make them. There are some comments, but the IESG (in several respects, quite reasonably) says that people were already consulted, that the policy is already in place, and that it isn't worth reevaluating until some experience has been accumulated. In the first case, I wouldn't expect an appeal. If there was one, I'd expect it to fail unless the appeal raised an issue that came as a complete surprise (i.e., that the topic had not been discussed at all before). In the second, it seems to me that an appeal is more likely (and, IMO, possibly justified) but that the likely outcome is not much different. And maybe that is a problem.\ > In short, I don't see that anything is broken with the > appeal process, and I encourage participants to make use of > this mechanism if they believe that they have valid concerns > about decisions taken by either the IESG or IAB. Good. And see above. best, john
