Re: IESG voting procedures

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Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> I actually think that the "rough consensus" model is not well suited for
> IESG, because IESG rarely has enough members with the kind of expertise
> needed to make that kind of judgment.   The number of IESG members who
> review a typical document and really understand its implications is
> probably around 3-4.    Most of those voting "no objection" have
> probably not read the document, at least not in depth.  So in a case
> where there's one sponsoring AD voting yes and one AD voting discuss,
> it's really close to one or two in favor against one opposed.  But the
> way IESG votes, distorts this and makes it look like many against one.


While I agree to your later observation that some IESG ballots are
more like 1:1 or 2:1 (because of the many "no objection"s), I still
think that "rough consensus" should work for the IESG as well, and
primarily because of the "issue resolution process" that it requires,
rather than every IESG member being or becoming a technical expert
on each particular subject.


I believe that a certain "technical leadership" is desirable
_and_ possible, and dismissing "rough consensus" and as well of
some other mentioned ideas would reduce the IESG function to a
mostly clerical one.


IMHO the current ballot rules, especially those for standards action,
are not very well suited for corner cases, and they can (and sometimes
do) fail in an unsafe fashion.  I would appreciate if they would be
adjusted to fail in a safe fashion.


One of the corner cases being discussed is when there is active
dissent within the IESG, and how to cope with it.  I'm not sure
that there really is a problem.  The assertion that has been made
is that publishing a document (or approving a standards action)
would be the "safe" failure mode, and I'm violently opposed to
such a concept.  If there is a problem, fix the issue resolution
process.  Adjusting the ballot rules to ignore dissent seems like
a bad idea to me.


A somewhat different issue, which I am actually more concerned about,
is the unsafe failure in the lack-of-support situation.  Why do we
make it so hard to IESG to let a document "die"?  One single "yes"
and otherwise just "recuded" and "no objection" does not make
a very good safeguard.  It would seem much more sensible to require
at least two ADs to provide a "yes"--which means that they should
have performed some level of independent review of the document
the document writeups and at least parts of controversial discussion
(if that exists).  Or alternatively, leave at 1 "yes", but make the
responsible AD always recused for documents for which they requested
an IETF LC.


The issue is, if there is strong dissent, put the burden to resolve
the dissent or to convince at least two IESG members that remaining
dissent after issue resultion it is unjustified, on the document
submittor(s) rather than leaving the burden on the IESG alone,
as a procedural safeguard.


-Martin
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