On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 09:31:08PM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote: > Harald> I do not want the IETF to craft rules for "X", and then > Harald> re-craft them for "Y", "Z" and "W" because hastily crafted > Harald> rules did not fit the next situation to come along. I want > Harald> the rules to be reasonable, and stable. And I think > Harald> making up rules while considering a specific unique case > Harald> is harmful to such a process. > > Perhaps. However precident-based case law seems to work well for a > number of process systems. There is an old saying, "Hard cases make bad law", which shows that there are certainly times when precedent-based case law does have its failure modes. The real problem I see here is the fact that we are _trying_ to make lots and lots of rules. Strict rules make (appear to make) life easier, because then the people applying the rules can be programs, and can just blindly follow the rules. Ambiguous rules that don't cover every last possible contingency with rules for each and every case (what we have now) makes life painful, since we have these long and extended and tiresome debates. So there is an assumption that the right place to go is have rules that cover all cases. Of course, there is a 3rd possibility which is to simply make the rules be that we trust the IESG to use its discretion wisely, and if they abuse that right, people can either (a) throw the bums out at the future nomcom cycles, or (b) choose to go to another standards body. (This is, after all, not like Soviet Russia where if you don't like the rights and due process that you receive, you can't go anywhere else.) The reality is, if we don't find a way of managing disruptive people, it will be the _productive_ people that we decide to go somewhere else. Presumbly it is pretty clear which possibility I think makes the most sense. Regards, - Ted _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf