I strongly agree with John's reasoning here. But please keep reading...
From: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>
I have two questions...
(1) Do you have evidence of actual situations in which an AD
behaved in this way, kept concerns to him or herself, and then
raised them only, and for the first time, via a DISCUSS after
Last Call?
(2) If the answer to (1) is "yes", why didn't you, and the other
people who were impacted, immediately file recall petitions?
The second question is not rhetorical. We all understand that
recalls would be painful and destructive, that would they take
too long to have much practical impact, and so on. However, the
behavior I think you are describing would be such an egregious
violation of the ways that the community and the IESG should be
interacting with each other that I believe a recall would be
appropriate even for someone whose term on the IESG had only a
few months remaining: it would be at least as important to
establish a clear message that the behavior is unacceptable,
ever, as it would be to get the person off the IESG. No one is
valuable enough, hard-working enough, or smart enough that the
community should put up with the behavior I think you are
describing, even for a minute. And that implies to me that
there should be no perception that an AD can get away with it.
john
Now, backing off a few billion nanometers, When Michael kicked off this
thread, his posting began:
So what occurs to me is that a reasonable question to ask is whether
there are some legitimate success stories where a DISCUSS has actually
found big or reasonably big problems with a protocol that would have
wreaked havoc had they not been caught. I ask because ...
My impression is that drafts that capture experience with IETF working group
dynamics are painful and useful (thinking specifically of the case studies
in the draft that became http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3669.txt). I think
Michael's question is important enough to answer. I think I can think of
some examples where the answer is "yes", but this isn't about what *I*
think, it's about what our experience has been.
Do other people think that collecting DISCUSS success stories is helpful?
I have two points to add -
- Michael asked specifically about SUCCESS stories. The level of cynicism in
the circles I run being sufficiently high, I'm asking about the same thing
Michael is asking about, where "success" matches the dictionary definition.
- if people want to collect DISCUSS "success" stories, of the more ironic
nature, I ask that we do this, going forward, and not looking backward.
Depending on how you count Jon Peterson, we seated new ADs for almost half
the IESG last year, and we know that we will pick up at least a few more new
ADs this year, because some people have already said they will not return.
We don't need to replay 30 years of history, and even going back to the
beginning of ID tracker use would be less than helpful.
If you have relevant deep dirt from the recent past, please feel free to
file recalls and provide NomCom input, of course. But I hope everyone
already knows that.
Thanks,
Spencer
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