--On Friday, October 18, 2013 17:29 -0700 Randy Presuhn <randy_presuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >... > If indeed a large time sink is the time needed to DISCUSS > work, increasing the size of the IESG won't help. Having > multiple IESGs might give better scalability. Even splitting > the current IESG into two (one AD from each area into each > IESG) might provide better parallelism. Of course, doing > this would require us to finally disabuse ourselves of any > notions that "the" IESG really understands everything or is > in total control of anything. Whether on this hypothesis or most others, it seems to me that splitting up the IESG horizontally (each Area represented in each IETF) or vertically (half the Areas to one, half to the other), with or without a significant increase in the number of total IESG members, would almost certainly create several new problems (some of these have been mentioned by others): * The ability for the IESG to work as a team (and, fwiw, to be held accountable as a team) would be much reduced. For that purpose, the IESG is probably very close to the maximum size. Doubling it would fundamentally change the nature of the process, with or without horizontal or vertical splits. As two obvious examples, its size is probably already above the maximum for real conversations with the community in plenaries. Now imagine something over 32 people on the stage in a plenary and, if there were either split, figure out whether we need one IESG Chair or two, which IESG the IAB Chair participates in, and so on. Or perhaps we should have three plenaries instead of two? * Cross-area review would probably be weakened. It is rare for even two ADs in an Area to have the same perspectives and knowledge. When they do, it is, IMO, a failure elsewhere in the system -- diversity of perspectives, even within an Area, is a strength. A vertical split would mean little contact between top and bottom layer ADs and some "interesting" questions about what to do about, e.g., Security. * A horizontal split would make ADs in an Area filling in for each other in the event of illness or overload and moving WGs back and forth to compensate for changes in load much more difficult. * Any split (or even a significant growth in size) would create (or enhance) a management nightmare around the issues that the IESG really needs to reach agreement on as a group. We probably don't want different review or "voting" policies based on semi-random decisions about where a WG or Area falls. The issue of what to do about Chairs and Liaisons is mentioned above. In addition, shifting more review burden and responsibility to directorates, etc., rather that having those reviews be advisory to relevant ADs about issues to which they need to pay special attention blows up accountability because decision-making authority would effectively shift from people selected by the Nomcom to self-selected community members. That could easily lead to more appeals (appeals are usually an incredibly time-consuming process) or having the IETF in a very difficult position if there were ever a claim of impropriety in the decision-making about at standard. If a split is wanted, there is another way to do it, one that would introduce a different set of new or more complex issues than the above and address the scaling problem differently. See https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-stds-review-panel/ for an example of one such proposal. Disclaimer: I haven't looked at that document in years and don't know whether I would still support it, best, john