Hi John,
At 07:42 PM 31-03-2024, John C Klensin wrote:
(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.
I doubt that most of the current IESG members and some of the
subscribers to this list were active in those days. There was a time
when the process relied on the participant to raise his/her
concerns. There was also the formal side, i.e. what you explained in (1).
The mechanics of the process has changed over the last ten years. A
few WGs have turned into communities over the years. There are
lukewarm attempts every now and then to raise concerns in those
communities. The results are far from encouraging.
On one hand, having at least one IESG member at a (formal) session
reduce the odds of process issues. On the other hand, it might be a
bit redundant if the WG Chair has many years of experience. The IESG
member assigned to the WG would still be answerable if something goes wrong.
At 12:05 PM 24-03-2024, John C Klensin wrote:
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
It's more of a request for review. It could also have been described
as mediation as an appeal might push the different parties to adopt
an adversarial stance. The mistake/improvement occurred many years ago.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
