--On Thursday, March 21, 2013 10:51 -0800 Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 3/21/13 9:19 AM, SM wrote: >> I welcome feedback from anyone. > > All righty, then. I do think that when someone is offering an > opinion on the role of the IESG in moving work through the > IETF, it's helpful if they've actually brought new work to the > IETF, socialized it, negotiated with ADs around creating a new > working group or rechartering an existing one, etc. Because > the IESG effectively functions as gatekeepers to taking on new > work, it matters a lot that they have reasonably wide > visibility into the industry and into real-world networking > problems. Having an IESG in which everybody has pretty much > the same background is not how you achieve that. > > It appears to be the case that people don't understand the > gatekeeping role of the IESG in bringing new work into the > organization unless they've experienced it directly. FWIW. I would add to the above that it is hard -- perhaps not impossible, but hard-- to understand the document approval role of the IESG and how it works in practice without experiencing it first hand. That experience could come from inside the IESG or as a WG Chair, author, or shepherd who gets to be on the front lines of the interactions. I think it is a problem that others in the community --especially those who end up on the Nomcom or making suggestions to it-- don't have that understanding those experiences bring, but it is a bit of a separate problem except when it gets tangled up in this sort of discussion. I, and I believe Melinda, have been pushing back on several of Martin's comments and a few of yours, not because you lack some particular credentials but because those remarks don't describe the workings of the IESG in its various functions as we understand and have experienced it. At least for me, every "you haven't done X" or "you haven't been a Y" comment isn't about qualifications to comment but is merely a hypothesis as to why our understanding of how the system works and yours and/or Martin's are different. best, john