> On Sep 2, 2011, at 7:07 PM, Ned Freed wrote: > >> As far as our process is concerned, the question is, do we have rough > >> consensus to accept it? I think it's dubious that we have such consensus, and > >> apparently so do others. > > > > Simply put, I've watched the responses to this fairly closely, and I completely > > disagree with your assessment. > ok. > >> Personally I think this proposal is Mostly Harmless, so I'm willing to hold > >> my nose about it. But I'm very concerned about the argument that the default > >> assumption should be that we change our process even in the absence of > >> consensus to do so. > > > >> Regarding the proposal, I get the impression that people are mostly in three > >> camps: > > > > Well, none of these describe my own position, which is that eliminating the > > three step process will at a minimum act as an incentive to move more documents > > along. (You, and most others engaging in this debate, routinely neglect the > > psychological factors involved.) > > > > I can easily name a dozen RFCs, all currently at proposed, that I for one will > > be strongly incented to work to advance if this step is taken. > At the risk of playing devil's advocate, how will that help? Will the > specifications significantly improve in quality and interoperability improve > as a result? First of all, since when is improving specifications the sole purpose of the IETF standards advancement process? As I understand it, the goal behind having different document statuses is for the labels to tell implementors how well things are likely to actually work. In other words, I categorically reject your implied assumption here that the IETF advancement process only makes sense when specifications are improved along the way. Plenty of specifications currently at proposed are of sufficient quality to be full standards right now. Our problem is right now the process is so onerous few people bother, so the presence of the higher label is useful but the absence of it is not. But even if I were to accept your tacit assumptions about the purpose of the process - which I most assuredly do not - the answer is yes, some and perhaps all of these specifications will be improved along the way, and at least a couple are likely to be significantly improved. Features that in hindsight turned out to be problematic will be removed, prose will be checked and tightend, etc. etc. If you think specification advancement doesn't receive this level of scrutiny and resulting improvement currently, you haven't been paying attention. > Will the blessing of these documents as Internet Standards result in wider > implementation and thus greater benefit to users? (not knowing which RFCs > you're talking about, I can't even guess) Keith, you know as well as I do that there can be no guarantess that the Internet will care about anything we do, let alone see value in such advancements. But given past experience it seems very likely that at least some benefits along these lines will be accrued. > From my perspective there's little problem with implementing and deploying at > Proposed and having documents stay at Proposed indefinitely, provided we can > ensure that the specifications are of high quality by the time they get to > Proposed. And given that people do tend to implement and deploy at Proposed, > there's only marginal benefit to promoting them to anything else - except on > those occasions where this serves as a carrot to fix bugs in the original spec > that people might otherwise live with. And it's not clear to me that the > proposed change increases the incentive to do either. And what happens in this world of only proposed standards when, as is often the case despite all the absurd added scrutiny we now apply to proposed standards, something problematic slips past us all? The simple fact that we almost always make changes, and often significant ones, to documents that advance, shows we don't always get it right. And when this happens what's the alternative? Once something is approved it can be very difficult to get consensus to move it historic. You appear to be assuming that if we stare at stuff long enough and review it hard enough we'll find all the issues in one step. Sorry, it never worked this way in the past, and as the complexity of specifications has increased, it works even less well now than ever before. Specifications have to be tried, and tried at scale, to tell if they are any good. Indeed, past experience indicates that the sorts of additional review you have repeatedly advocoted for in these discussions usually backfires: It has an uncanny way of turning the process into a beauty contest were important work gets stifled just because it ran contrary to some higher-up's beliefs about something. Once again you're failing to take psychological factors into account, and they *matter*. > > Additionally, by simplifying the process, we will gain essential insight into > > where other problems lie. Without such simplification I see no chance at all at > > making progress on any of these issues. > Okay, I can see that as a possibility. Sometimes when undertaking a great > task, it doesn't matter what subtask you pick to do next, as long as you do > something. Momentum is often more important than doing things in order of > importance. My question is then, how many people think that we need to > undertake a great task where our process is concerned, and how many of those > think that given current political conditions, if we undertake such a task, > we're likely to end up with something substantially better than we have now? > (I'm open to the idea but skeptical) My answer is I have no idea. Our current process is so complex - and unnecessarily so - that every time we even try and discuss substantial changes the discussion goes off in about fifty different directions. When it comes to the really big stuff we can't even agree on where to start, let alone get consensus on what to try and fix. So let's please take the small step of simplifying the process a little first, so perhaps we can get some perspective on the big stuff. Or not - it may well be that this small step isn't sufficient to gain any sort of perspective, but I've already given my reasons for believing it's useful in it's own right even if that does not happen. > > > >> 1) Even if this is a baby step, it's a step in the right direction. Or even > >> if it's not a step in the right direction, taking some step will at least > >> make it possible to make some changes in our process. Maybe we'll not like > >> the results of taking this step, but at least then we'll have learned > >> something, and if the result is clearly worse we'll be motivated to change it. > >> (I call this "change for the sake of change") > > > > That last substantially and obviously mischaracterizes this position. In fact > > I strongly recommend that you stop trying to summarize complex position with > > cute - and utterly wrong - phrases like this. This is annoying and > > quite unhelpful. > There are definitely cases where "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a > single step", I'm just skeptical that that argument applies in this specific > case. > >> 2) Fixing the wrong problem doesn't do anything useful, and will/may serve > >> as a distraction from doing anything useful. > >> (I call this "rearranging the deck chairs") > > > >> 3) People should stop arguing about this and just hold their noses about it, > >> because the arguing will make it harder to do anything else in this space. > >> (I call this "Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia". Ok, that's > >> probably too harsh, but it's what immediately comes to mind.) > > > > Actually, I think there are a substantial numer of people who believe exactly > > the opposite of this. > I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Are you saying that there are > a substantial number of people who wish to make it harder to do anything at all > in this space, so they keep arguing about it? Or something else? I think a substantial number of people believe there is nonegligable benefit in doing this. No nose-holding required. > >> The arguments that people are giving in favor of approving this bother me > >> more than the proposal itself does. (I'm a firm believer that good decisions > >> are highly unlikely to result from flawed assumptions, and flawed assumptions > >> often affect many decisions. So challenging a widely-held flawed assumption is > >> often more important than challenging any single decision.) > > > > Well, the main argument I'm giving is based on my own perception of the effect > > this will have on myself and similarly minded people as a contributor. If you > > think that assessment is incorrect, then I'm sorry, but I think you're being > > extraordinarily foolish. > I think you're in an excellent position to understand how approval or > disapproval of this document will affect your interest in doing work on the > documents you mentioned, and I'm sure you're not the only one who would be > encouraged by such a change to our process. And IMO that's a good thing. Ned _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf