On Dec 29, 2006, at 8:44 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
That's great when it's possible and desirable, but it's sometimes impossible, and sometimes undesirable. How about a bit more nuanced view: any DISCUSS position should move towards being actionable as all the parties come to understand each other and the alternative approaches, rather than simply trash the DISCUSS because it's not actionable yet. It's impossible for an AD to give a clear statement of what actions to take to clear a DISCUSS when the issue begins as a question. It can sometimes take a few weeks for an issue like "Can somebody explain to me whether this draft really suffers from such-and-such a problem, or did I miss something which would make it immune to that problem?" to turn from a beginning exploratory DISCUSS into an accurate problem description (if there still is one), and from there into a clear statement of actions to take. It's undesirable for an AD to give a clear statement of what actions to take to clear a DISCUSS when there are many possible approaches and the AD doesn't know enough about previous discussions rejecting some of them. It unnecessarily hardens everybody's positions if an AD blithely suggests "To clear my issues, this document should be made Experimental instead of Proposed Standard" when the WG can't abide that particular solution and there may be half a dozen other solutions. Proposing a solution too early (before an AD understands the problem and the local constraints) is a classic engineering mistake. I hope you'll forgive us when we do suggest the wrong solution now and then under pressure to make DISCUSSes actionable. I've been document shepherd on WG documents where other ADs placed a DISCUSS and described their issue in terms of the problem. Once we came to a certain amount of agreement on the problem, I've worked with WG chairs and authors to figure out the WG's preferred solution. We checked with the DISCUSSing ADs along the way to see if our alternatives would actually satisfy their issues, and those ADs have been responsive and open-minded in considering various possible solutions. I've done this both as WG chair (pre-AD) and as shepherding AD. Sometimes it takes a bit more work to find the best solution rather than the first one. Lisa |
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