John, I agree with just about everything you say here, except for this: At Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:56:51 -0500, John C Klensin wrote: > And, incidentally, I believe that discussions about inherent > conflicts of interest in the current appeals process are > irrelevant to this discussion, for two reasons. First, as > others have repeatedly pointed out, our appeals mechanisms are > an important tool for reaching and establishing consensus, not a > judicial procedure. Yes, it's not a judicial procedure, but nevertheless, an appeal of an IESG action inherently involves the claim that the IESG has made a mistake, and the IESG is not exactly in a position to judge that neutrally. Yes, the IESG does sometimes reverse itself, but there have also been times where the IESG has denied an appeal, the appellant has appealled to the IAB, and the IAB has upheld it. Having been involved in such cases, I don't think I would characterize them as "establishing consensus". > And second, if there are conflicts of > interest that we believe are unacceptable, and that belief is > based on experience rather than theory or hypothetical > situations, then we need to fix 2026 and the appeals process for > reasons and in ways that have little to do with the publication > delay question. I didn't say that there were COIs that were unacceptable. I said they needed to be mitigated by ensuring that the appellant had an opportunity to have a hearing before a neutral (or as neutral as possible) party. I think the current 2026 procedures more or less do that, but in this particular case there is a bug in the process. It's not one I'd ordinarily spend a lot of time agitating to fix, but since Russ raised the topic of delaying publication, it's worth getting this aspect of it straight. -Ekr _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf