Spencer Dawkins wrote:
I strongly agree with John's reasoning here. But please keep reading...
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I really didn't want to take this off on this well trod tangent because
it was... pretty much a tangent. And I definitely didn't mean this turn
into some sort of grudgathon :)
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.
Right... my point here is that metrics are often eye opening -- for all
parties concerned. Even somewhat flawed and subjective metrics, so
long as they are taken with the proper grains of salt. My sense is that
if we did things like track DISCUSSes, time to resolution, length of
DISCUSS in proportion to, oh say, the length of the draft or oh say
the amount of time the working group took to get it to the IESG it
might frame some of these debates in something resembling reality.
Or as my initial suggestion about tracking whether these DISCUSS's
are paying off when you factor in that all engineering is a tradeoff.
As in, how do we know if the process is working? How do we know
if the angst from us non-IESG folk about delay is justified, or would
it have better spent trying impose discipline on the working group?
I guess I'm just a gprof kind 'o guy.
Mike
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