I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the ADs' job to push back on documents with technical flaws. They're supposed to use their
judgments as technical experts, not just be conduits of information supplied by others.
I disagree that the ADs are necessarily that much more technically astute than the rest of us.
1. ADs usually _are_ more technically astute than the average IETF participant (perhaps not you, but the average participant), because ADs are selected for their expertise while IETF participants are self-selecting. (Maybe some are selected by their employers, but I don't think it's generally the practice of most employers to send their best technical people to standards committees. My impression is that many employers - not all by any means - would rather send people who are expendable, and/or who will represent the company's official position rather than their own best judgment.)
2. ADs also tend to have a broader perspective than the average IETF participant, because ADs are exposed to everything that IETF does while most participants' activity is confined to a narrow topic area. That's not to say that a broad perspective is inherently less valuable than a narrow perspective - they're both valuable, but for different reasons.
But both of those are less relevant than the fact that it's IESG's _job_ to make judgments about the quality of specifications and protocols, and that this is a _necessary_ job. WGs are too frequently insular and too frequently want to make unacceptable compromises - somebody has to serve as a check against that. Somebody has to resolve conflicts between competing concerns. Somebody has to make sure that the specifications are complete. etc.
I would actually feel more comfortable with ADs providing their technical judgment with the rest of us, through the same mechanism: WG or IETF last call. And that technical judgment should be expressed openly, in an archived WG mailing list, where everyone's technical input can be reviewed and everyone who provides technical input can be held accountable.
I have mixed feelings about this. I believe that often it is the case that ADs providing technical input through the WG mailing list, and participating in discussions on that list, is the most effective way to resolve the differences. On the other hand, mailing lists that are focused on a narrow topic are not good places for resolution of issues that involve concerns outside the WG's scope - the WG tends to dismiss those concerns out-of-hand even though they are valid. Also it is impractical for every AD to participate in lengthy discussions with every WG whose work is commented on - where each message to a WG from an AD could elicit several responses, each expecting a response from the AD who is reviewing dozens of documents every week.
I can imagine a process that encourages the responsible AD and document author (and/or chair) to go over the DISCUSS comments together and to identify those which are noncontroversial and those which need further discussion. The proposed resolution of the noncontroversial issues and the list of controversial issues should certainly be presented to the WG, and perhaps the WG should be encouraged to identify potential compromises on the controversial issues. If the WG comes up with reasonable compromises, that's great. But in general I don't think we can afford to insist that such issues be resolved on the WG mailing list in an discussion with the ADs. Just like a design team within a WG might need to work out compromises within itself (to be ratified by the larger group), so might the chair, authors, and ADs need to work out compromises at that level.
I don't think that it's feasible to insist that all issues raised by ADs be raised in Last Call, because ADs also have to make judgments about the importance and validity of Last Call comments, and they may even have to reconcile differences between conflicting Last Call comments. What this means is that there are always going to be some issues raised after Last Call - and it's not clear that having two separate AD review phases in the process would an improvement (in my experience, the more often I read a document, the harder it became to notice the effects of changes to that document). But of course I do favor ADs (and others) bringing issues to a WG's attention as early as possible. Ideally those issues should be raised long before Last Call time, and long before the WG thinks the design is frozen.
Keith
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