--On Thursday, 23 December, 2004 09:42 -0800 Carl Malamud <carl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi John - > > Your note seems like an outlier. In particular, it takes a > really *strong* stance on protecting people from each other > because people *will* act badly. For example, the way I read > your note, the IESG will micromanage and the IASA/IAD will > order bagels flown in daily from New York. Appeals will be a > daily happening and people will hire lawyers instead of > working it out. No, my concern is that (i) the IESG, or the IESG's leadership, is likely to micromanage because it has tended to micromanage, or try to do so, many of the things it has touched in the last several years -- the secretariat, the content of various documents down to the editorial level, the RFC Editor, and so on (some of that has gotten better in recent months or years, but that isn't the point). Even you have made the claim that they (for some instance of "they") have tried to micromanage you in terms of the contents of your various reports and recommendations. And the discussion of why the IETF and IAB Chairs had to be on the IAOC had, to me, a strong ring of "so we can make sure that administrative entity does exactly what we want", which is close to an operational definition of intended micromanagement. So that one isn't a corner case, it is a simple extrapolation from behavior that has been observed in the community (and commented upon in the Problem Statement work, which makes it feel like I'm not alone in those impressions). (ii) If I'm worried about bagels (I'm really not), I'm not worried about the IAD/IASA making that decision: I expect those people to be firmly in contact with fiscal realities and priorities. If they are not, we will have far worse problems than the bagel supply. But I'm concerned about even the possibility of bagels-by-appeal, or bagels-by-IESG/IAB-overriding IAD decisions, even while realizing that particular example is (deliberately) unlikely. And, as I said, the issue I'm raising is a key management and management-relationships principle. Whether one agrees with it or not, characterizing it as a corner case seems to me like a stretch. >... > Seriously: this BCP seems, imo, pretty much cooked. There may > be flaws and holes that people forgot, but this would be a lot > easier to nail down if we had some operational experience in > the new framework and then solve problems that are real. > There are lots of checks in balances in place, there are going > to be lots of new people who have to get up to speed, and > the community is watching. The observation that what I was suggesting was close to what was there now and would require only a few wording changes came from Harald and not from me. I was just trying to be sure we all had the same understanding of what those wording changes would be intended to mean if we mean them. > I know you don't want to revise the BCP every 10 minutes for > the next 10 years, but if we had to ammend it once or even > twice, this would not be a big tragedy. No. But I've heard that the draft IAD job description was floated by a couple of HR/ search experts (I believe at least one of those reports has not been forwarded to the transition team because there was no indication that the advice was wanted) and that the comments involved phrases like "incompetent description" and "no one sane would take a job defined that way". These are not small issues: they go to the very core of the likely ability of the IAD and IAOC to function. To paraphrase an out-of-context quote from a different discussion, I don't want to see Harald become the next-to-last Chair of the IETF because of this process. Put differently, I'd like to be sure that principles are well enough articulated, and details left to where they can be worked out, that we get a chance to revise the BCP without completely killing the IETF in the process. > My personal advice: let's stop negotiating, call this BCP > cooked, and move on to other fires. And my personal advice is to make sure that we get the principles right and that we do so, as needed, based on competent review and advice. I also recommend that we look at past behaviors and assume that they extrapolate cleanly into future behaviors unless reasons or conditions can be identified that make such extrapolation inappropriate. I further recommend that it is far more useful to look at those extrapolations and what they mean about both principles and implementation than it is to spend a lot of energy on scenarios that are really unlikely, such as how things would be handled, in detail, if IETF income from meeting fees significantly exceeded all expenses in a given year. You may have noted that I've said virtually nothing, on or off-list, about editorial matters that don't impact principles except sometimes to suggest that excess detail be removed. That is not an accident. It is consistent, I think, with your desire to get this cooked and out but without pushing important issues under the proverbial rug in the process. YMMD, of course, and likely does. best, john _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf