On 3/31/24 22:42, John C Klensin wrote:
(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".
+1
I've never thought it was okay for WGs to be entirely autonomous,
at least not if they expect their work to be approved when they
believe it is complete.
IESG is supposed to be a *steering* group, after all.
At the same time I admit that it's always been difficult for ADs
to supervise their WGs closely enough to ensure that their WGs are
doing quality work. The best solution I can recommend for that
problem is to have fewer WGs. (Increasing the number of ADs
creates other problems, including increasing the number of ADs who
can vote DISCUSS.)
Keith
