> Just to be clear, my last response below was to the notion > that it is okay for a working group to consider the drafts that > are ready to be considered, That depends on what you mean by "ready". it is axiomatic that draft availability is only the first step to something being "ready". Obviously sufficient people have to have read the thing, or if they've already read it familiarize themselves with whatever has changed. > as opposed to those that are nearing > (or past) their milestones. I see no connection here at all. A draft is either ready for consideration or it isn't. What the milestones say is almost completely irrelevant. (I suppose it might be different if we consistently got things done before milestone dates and some subset of the participants were scheduling reviews on the basis of milestone dates and not WG agendas, but AFAIK the former is very rare and the latter unheard of.) > This was how you responded to part > of Spencer's (I think) assertion that some WG chairs do try to > create reasonable schedules (i.e - the reference to staggered > milestones, which has been elided below). > You seemed to be saying that such effort is wasted in your > experience. I never said or even implied any such thing. For about the dozenth time, this is about eliminating the mechanical cutoff date. Nothing else. This endless stream of strawmen is starting to grate. > Also, I was not asserting that any existing rules are in > place to help with that, nor do I think automated rules would be > likely to help. But I do think that working group chairs and > (where necessary) area directors should invest some effort in > ensuring that the work is progressing to schedule and that one > of the ways to do that is to create schedules that make sense. Sure, that's all motherhood and apple pie. But the trick is to try and find actual incentives to make this happen. In my experience streamlining processes and getting rid of unnecessary rules are pretty much the only incentives we have available, whereas rules creating additional hoops to jump through, as you seem to be suggesting, invariably act as strong disincentives. > Assuming the schedules do make sense, sticking to a schedule > - it seems to me - would be easier if the working group were to > work on things based on where they should be (from the schedule), > as opposed to where they are. And that would mean it would be a > more productive use of a working group's time to spend it trying > to determine why a draft that should be at a certain point is not > at that point than to spend an equivalent amount of time discussing > work that just happens to be ready to discuss. I'm sorry but I just don't see it. Far and away the most common reason drafts aren't ready is because someone in some important role didn't have enough time to do something. In such cases brief consideration of whether a switch of authorship, or reviewership, or whatever the draft is stuck on makes sense. And if the draft is stuck because of substantive disagreement then that's obvious something the group needs to spend time resolving. But a massive "why are we not meeting milestones" introspection-fest would send me, and I suspect a lot of other people, running out of the room, never to return. I nave neither the time nor the patience to indulge in such nonsense. > There are issues with this, particularly in an all-volunteer > organization. But let's face the fact that the IETF is a volunteer > organization - for the most part - in name only. Well, if you want facts, how about the *fact* that not only did I receive zero compensation for most of the time I spent developing MIME, I paid to attend most of the IETF meetings in those days out of my own pocket. Even now Sun, my employer, mildly encourages my participation as long as it doesn't cut into my getting my regular work done. But they certainly doesn't go out of their way to have me do IETF stuff, let alone insist on it. And I don't think I'm alone in this. Quite a few people participate for reasons other than their employers push them to do it. Heck, some of the biggest participants in some of the groups I'm in have never attended a meeting because they have no sponsorship to do so. Their participation is entirly remote. This probably varies a lot from one group to the next. > Most people don't > have to have their arms twisted to be a WG chair (or AD) in an IETF > WG (or Area) in which their employer has interest, and the people > who are doing the work in the working groups are - mostly - not > doing it for free either. This may well be true in your neck of the woods. But it's yet another thing I'm pretty sure doesn't generalize across the entire IETF. > People are certainly not getting enough > compensation for the work they're doing in the IETF, but I think it > unlikely that it would be impossible to get people to continue to > do it if there was the additional cost of doing it according to a > set of milestones, according to a plan they themselves helped to > set up... Impossible is exactly what it would be in quite a few cases I'm familiar with. All of which argues once again that Procrustean rules are a bad idea. Maybe strict adherence to milestones would help in some groups (I'm very skeptical, but just as you seem entirely unaware of how things actually work in my neck of the woods, I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt in yours) but it would be a terrible idea in others. The obvious solution is to give groups the flexibility to do what works for them. Ned _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf