Just responding to one part of this that I find interesting and that hasn't yet sparked discussion: > Also I always don't like when the IESG is discussing and I see that > the AD responsible for the I-D already made his decision, I prefer > that AD should wait until all put in their decision/discussions, and > then he may say what he thinks. This is a very interesting idea, but I don't know that we can do anything along this line that would have any real effect. To understand this, you'll need to know how the process works on our (the IESG's) end today: When a document comes out of one of my working groups, I do my AD evaluation, perhaps do a round or two of edits with the WG (or perhaps not), then request last call. While I do that, I prepare the "ballot" for the IESG. After last call, the document's status goes back into "Ad follow-up" state, and I schedule it for a telechat and issue the ballot. (Some of these things can overlap, depending upon the document, but that's not important here.) The ballot is where ADs record their positions: "no position", "yes", "no objection", "discuss", "abstain", or, in rare cases, "recuse" (and all ballots can have comments associated with them). All documents require one "yes" ballot and no "discuss" ballots in order to be approved. A Standards Track or BCP document *also* requires 9 other "yes" or "no objection" ballots (specifically, 2/3 of the non-recused ADs). Now, when I issue the ballot, the datatracker automatically sets *my* ballot position to "yes", and those of all the other ADs to "no position". That's because a "yes" ballot is required, and it's reasonable to assume that the sponsoring AD, the one who is bringing the document to the IESG, will ballot "yes" -- why else would she sponsor the document, if not? In principle, I like AB's idea: don't have the sponsoring AD contaminate things by pushing her "yes" in front of everyone, and let her judge the consensus of the IESG's discussion before balloting. It sounds useful, and correct. Unfortunately, in practice, what I say two paragraphs ago would get in the way: everyone will always *assume* that the sponsoring AD supports the document and would issue a "yes" ballot, so even if the rest of the IESG doesn't actually *see* the "yes" ballot initially, nothing would really change. In fact, there are occasions when a sponsoring AD ballots "discuss", with a clear explanation of why, and, again, the assumption that it will become "yes" when the issue is resolved. It's theoretically possible for the sponsoring AD to explicitly change the ballot to "abstain" (or, even more oddly, "no position"), but this would cause immediate questions from the other ADs as to what was going on, and why were they being asked to spend their time on this document when the sponsoring AD wasn't willing to support it. So: this sounds good, and might be worth some discussion of how it *could* be workable. Given the explanation above, does anyone think we can or should do anything here? Barry, Applications AD