On 5/16/2013 9:40 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
That's a good question Dave.
The community might like to comment.
On the whole, I am told that if an AD weighs in with her comments during working
group last call, her fearsome personality may overwhelm some of the WG
participants and she may dominate the WG consensus.
Only women ADs? [1]
But seriously...
Is it possible that the same would happen in IETF last call?
I think that the public sway of ADs on the IETF list is less of a risk
than on wg mailing lists. And note that my suggestion has ADs waiting
to weigh in until community-generated active disagreement with the spec,
or its passive agreement, has been established.
In any event, the current reality of having an AD weigh in with a a
process-blocking Discuss is not exactly /under-/whelming...
Simply put: We are starting with the reality that an AD is going to be
expressing their opinions. The question is when and how. It's not
going to be /less/ intimidating to have it done as a Discuss.
Contrary to some of the mythology that has been expressed about this,
the frequent reality is that the typical wg goal is to clear the
Discuss, not really to engage in debate with an AD who is blocking
document progress. (I've watched this reality many times over the
years.) That is far less healthy than having the AD's concern become
part of the /public/ review process.
I agree that this would bring the tail forward a little (not a lot).
I don't believe it would reduce AD work-load (which is another issue entirely).
Yes, the timing change is small. But the context change is enormous.
Lastly, I think I disagree with you about "really serious" IETF last call
comments coming in the first few days. It seems to me that we also get an number
Some, sure. But I said it was an efficiency hack. The goal isn't for
it to be perfect, just helpful.
d/
[1] The question of proper referential language is a continuing surprise
to me, given that the currently-popular conventions create more problems
than they solve -- and it's even a question on a PSAT preparatory
example that I saw yesterday. There's a pretty straightforward
alternative that works nearly all the time:
http://dcrocker.net/#gender
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net