--On Thursday, March 21, 2013 08:53 +0000 Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Individual ADs vary in their > habits according to workload, but my sense is that there is a > strong sense of collective responsibility and definitely not a > sense of rubber stamping. You could check the statistices I > suppose, but it is normal that when there is a DISCUSS ballot, > it is from an AD in another IETF area, and very rarely from > the co-AD in the same area. That wouldn't happen if the IESG > was a rubber-stamping machine. Agreed. I also suggest that experience in putting both WG and individual submission documents through the process in the last several years (and experience that, as Melissa pointed out, Martin apparently doesn't have) strongly suggests much more intense scrutiny than would be consistent with rubber-stamping. >From time to time, I'd suspected that some comments, especially editorial ones, are posted to prove to everyone that the AD involved actually did read the document. That pattern and associated discussions also strongly suggests that most ADs read or otherwise carefully consider most documents. Comments to prove that one has read the document or that are generated because, after doing all that work, one must have at least _some_ comment may be a problem, but, if so, it is different from the discussion on this thread. > Therefore, diversity (on any axis) within the IESG can impact > the results. But it is only at the output end, and diversity > within WGs should be even more valuable in generating robust > technical results. Yes. Over the years, I have been concerned about a different issue with IESG diversity. Today's IESG has 14 voting members with 12 different company affiliations and no company apparently supporting more than two ADs. That is actually not bad in either absolute terms or, I think, in comparison to the community. But we have had years in which company affiliations, presumed sponsorship, and industry sectors have been much more concentrated, possibly enough so to be fodder for antitrust actions focused on particular sets of decisions especially if industry partnerships and other relationships are considered. More diversity provides some inherent protection against that sort of problem as a useful side effect. Of course, that organizational diversity doesn't help with the 100% European or North American males within a moderately narrow age range dimensions of the broader issue. john