--On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:40 -0800 Melinda Shore
<melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 7/22/15 11:02 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
>> (1) We did not hesitate to shut them down if they were
>> not productive. I don't want a rigid rule because I
>> think we all know that, in practice, some WGs move at a
>> different pace than others, but it is important that we
>> be able to recognize "not meeting expectations and
>> making reasonable progress" and act on it.
>
> My mental model for how-things-work in the IETF is based on
> the working group secretaries situation - there was a sense
> that working group chairs were overloaded and in some cases
> not doing their jobs, and rather than remove a non-functioning
> chair or add another chair, a decision was made to add a new
> role (wg secretary) and an effort to formalize that role.
> That is to say, when things aren't working we tend to add
> more structure and more layers rather than removing structure
> and layers. Because this tends to happen, I am going to find
> it difficult to support a process change that is structured
> around an assumption that when things go badly groups will
> be shut down and chairs will be fired.
I was trying to be positive and optimistic and I hope the recent
experience with ARCHICE marks a turnaround, but I certainly
agree that, if we cannot, in practice, shut WGs down and do so
efficiently and with little fuss, this whole idea should be
considered a non-started. FWIW, I personally believe that this
long and complex process for creating WGs evolved precisely
because we could not shut a WG, once created, down and because
people believed that having a WG created entitled them to
produce standards and have them approved. If those are our
beliefs in actual practice, then the only choice is to try to
keep WGs that might turn disfunctional from being created.
> I basically like this proposal, although I'm going to tend
> to like any proposal that reduces leadership workload and
> that pushes a chartering decision back beyond the point at
> which a typical working group transitions from initial
> enthusiasm to committed core.
I would add Eric's desire to get WG's started before people run
out of steam and a desire to spend time getting work done (if
possible) rather than speculating on whether it will be
successful to that list.
> But I think we need to deal
> with the IETF as it is, which means a growing core of
> professional standardizers among both the participant and
> leadership (suggesting that people will basically work on
> anything, regardless of actual utility) and a predisposition
> to add goo rather than to remove it and against saying "no"
> to established efforts and chairs (which also goes to
> your fourth criterion, that sunk effort is not a guarantee of
> publication or standardization).
Yep.
thanks,
john