Re: When to DISCUSS?

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As most RFC authors know, when an IESG member identifies a problem in
a draft under IESG review, he or she casts a DISCUSS ballot, with
accompanying text, and the DISCUSS has to be cleared before the
document can advance.

draft-iesg-discuss-criteria-00.txt talks about this. Even within the
IESG, we still have one or two points to resolve, but we wanted to get this out before the cutoff date. This isn't in any way intended to change
any of the principles of the standards process, but we'd welcome
community comment.

   Brian

Dear Brian,

Thank you (and Jon, and Allison, and Margaret, and the rest of the et. al IESG) for producing this draft. At a high level, it is another welcome increase to IESG transparency (at least as good a reason to produce this draft as the two stated - new AD training and greater consistency between ADs).

I have a small number of suggestions I would like to make. I know the draft requested comments to iesg@xxxxxxxx, but several others have commented here, and I am rarely reluctant to post to this list when I express a variety of opinions, so saying something nice in the same place seemed only fair!

- It is probably helpful to include a reference to a complete list of possible ballot positions in the Introduction (something like https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=view_evaluation_desc, but you probably know the appropriate pointer - and I notice that this URL is titled "Explanation of DISCUSSes", but it is actually an explanation of all ballot otions).

- One point I took away from the recent chat about IANA registration on this list is that a substantial portion of the community thinks that when the IESG speaks, the IESG has spoken.

I understand that the term "discuss" is chosen intentionally (there is no "how long have you been smoking crack?" ballot option), and believe that the IESG actually expects the authors/editors/working group chairs/working group to "discuss" the draft with the AD/IESG, but I believe that a significant portion of the community hears "discuss", they think the IESG means "Discuss" (capitalized for emphasis), or maybe even "DISCUSS" (the IESG equivalent of a bullet through the forehead), and they start randomly changing text or otherwise folding up like cheap furniture, instead of expressing what the working group was trying to do in the DISCUSSed text.

I would suggest one paragraph that says something like "when we say "discuss", we mean this in the common English sense, even if we spell it in all caps, and we really do want a dialog, not random changes to a specification in the hopes of placating us and getting the DISCUSS removed".

This would naturally fit at the beginning of Section 4 ("Discuss Resolution"), but I would like to see all of "Section 4" appear as context before the rest of the discussion about how DISCUSS can and cannot happen.

- I thought that historically the IESG had the most irritated AD hold the DISCUSS for a draft, instead of having five separate DISCUSSes that might be resolved in conflicting ways. If this is still current practice, you might mention this, and explain why.

- I agree with the list of DISCUSS Criteria, but http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3967.txt is probably worth mentioning in the bullet on downrefs.

- I agree with the list of DISCUSS Non-Criteria ("thank you!"), but would like to see the "cross-area" bullet phrased so that it states what SHOULD have happened - something like,

o There is recent work or additional information that might be added to the document. Although the cross-area perspective of the IESG
     invites connections and comparison between disparate work in the
     IETF, cross-area review should have happened before IESG review,
and if this has not happened, it is evidence of a process failure.

- I'm not sure I "get" 3.3 ("saying no to a document"), for these reasons:

(1) If the irritated AD votes "abstain", the document doesn't say what the resolution path is - is the idea that some other AD who didn't write the comments reads them and votes "DISCUSS - Marvin's comments are right, or you need to explain why they are not right"? Or is an ABSTAIN with very irritated comments somehow a special state?

(2) The ABSTAIN path (assuming that (1) is explained fully) seems entirely sufficient, without adding the "However" path, where the irritated AD writes the comments and still votes DISCUSS. How strongly does the IESG feel about this? To me, it is edging toward "IESG as protector of the universe", but it assumes that the AD can't convince anyone else to vote DISCUSS (or whatever the path through (1) is). The DISCUSS path seems like the weakest part of this very good 00 draft. But maybe I just don't understand the path through (1) well enough to understand the difference between the ABSTAIN option and the DISCUSS option.

(3) The description of the ABSTAIN path says "writes up the comments", and the description of the DISCUSS path says "explain his or her position as clearly as possible in the tracker". Is this really different, or just the kind of thing that happens the week before the 00 cutoff? (I know it happens in MY 00 drafts!) I still wish there was some reference to the comments on this evil, evil draft actually appearing in the mailing list that is theoretically the archive for discussions about the specifications produced by the working group, but let's let that lie for now.

- The first paragraph in Section 4 is more specific than "the people who need to discuss the draft, discuss the draft", but not a lot more specific. I understand that many possible combinations of AD/ADs/IESG and editor(s)/working group chair(s)/working groups may end up as parties to the discussion, but I would like to see text that finally assigns responsibility for negotiating DISCUSS resolution to SOMEbody (not sure I care who). If there was a sentence that says "DISCUSSes are supposed to be serious and relatively rare, so DISCUSS resolutions should be posted to the appropriate mailing lists before the document appears on the next IESG telechat agenda", that would be lovely. Other sentences with other nouns might be lovely as well.

Again, thank you for spending the time to hammer out the first version of this draft.

Spencer


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