Lars, Do you not have individuals in the directorate that are experts on congestion control (that aren't document authors) that can review for technical sanity of the proposal? ISTM that some of the TSV nominees have broad technical skills, including management that could be quite useful. Certainly, we have an example where a Nomcom appointed someone with little expertise for a specific area and the result was not good. However, I believe that was far more to do with how the individual approached the role - authoritarian versus understanding that from a technical perspective they should really listen to the experts. IMHO, that's the most important skill that some ADs lack - i.e., listening. In my experience at not all ADs carefully scrutinize WG items and they tend to rely on the write-up of the shepherd. While the shepherd is most often the WG chair, if they do their job properly, I believe that the problems that an AD might encounter are fewer. I will note that from what I have seen not all shepherds actually review the documents themselves, which is a problem unto itself. There is often quite visible when one does gen-art reviews. ISTM, there is a way for the process to work with an AD that is not the technical expert in specific areas IF others down the chain do their jobs properly. Of course, IETF is really bad at managing down the chain when there are weak links. IMHO, someone with decent project management and people management skills can make a huge difference. Regards, Mary. On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Eggert, Lars <lars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > On Mar 3, 2013, at 15:35, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> What I'm getting at is that this line of argument doesn't scale. >> The only solution I see is to replace it by >> "Several people on the Y Directorate need to understand X." > > only if the Y directorate reviews all IDs going through the IESG. Which in itself is a scaling issue. It may work for some topics, but things will fall through the cracks for various reasons. > > IMO congestion control is important and fundamental enough that the IESG itself needs to have the knowledge. YEs, I'm biased. > > Lars