On 5/30/2013 9:06 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
On 5/29/13 10:53 PM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
I see a wedge :-)
The problem is where to stop.
Well, I don't know. Maybe the problem is where to
start. That is to say, I don't know what problem
this document is trying to solve, or if there even
is a problem.
Like you, I think we need to be very careful about creating stray
process documents or... stray processes.
That said, we have processes and we need to do them well.
The IETF permits an extraordinary degree of flexibility in much of the
detail for doing the actual work. The main benefit is that it lets a
group adjust its style of work according to the nature of the work and
the preferences of the workers.
A small, well-integrated group that is focusing on a narrow,
well-understood topic can reasonably use a very different daily style
than a large, highly heterogeneous group that is working on a difficult,
poorly understood topic.
Currently, that tends to mean that folk invent things on the fly, often
importing models from other groups. Both the spontaneous invention and
the importation risk assorted problems ranging from serious inefficiency
to outright mismatch with the culture.
What we've lacked is much effort to capture 25+ years of experience of
doing the grunt work of IETF daily management. We don't really pass on
the culture very well, beyond some clever catch phrases and formal
process structure and criteria specifications.
So the intent of the current draft is to capture one aspect of the
collective wisdom and pass it on to others. It is "us" -- all of us --
speaking to "them", as if sitting around the bar, talking about how to
get things done.
The document is quite explicit that it has no force other than
representing some collective wisdom.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net