--On Tuesday, August 04, 2015 03:09 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Is it useful for authors of a draft to send messages saying
> things like "I support the adoption of this draft as a WG
> document." ?
>...
> (I see similar messages from non-authors, and I am definitely
> doubtful about them unless they start with something like "I
> have read this draft and...".)
Brian,
I think there are some other, related, questions that may be
more relevant in different scenarios. As a result, the answer
to your question may be "it depends on the WG and circumstances"
or just "it depends". Some of those scenarios raise questions
for me about whether this whole business of WG adoption as a
major milestone is actually the right idea in all cases.
(1) Suppose, reflecting particularly on a comment about further
improvement in the document prior to adoption, someone says "I
think the document, as it now appears, is garbage but that the
work area is important and the WG should adopt it so it can fix
it". I contend that is _very_ useful input, but raises other
issues.
(2) Suppose, as suggested by another comment, some of the
authors have lost interest. Should the "adoption" process also
be taken as an opportunity to review authorship... given that
authors/editors of WG documents are supposed to be appointed by
the WG Chairs and responsible to the WG and that our procedures
give the authors who did the initial versions of a document that
evolves into something adopted by a WG no rights to authorship
(or anything else) on the resulting document if the WG Chair(s)
believe they are not optimal for the "finishing" job.
(3) Suppose the content of the document falls well within the
scope of the WG and does so clearly enough that, were it to
appear as an Individual Submission on IETF Last Call, there
would be demands for an opinion from the WG (either in its own
right or acting as an "independent technical review". Is
avoiding that sort of issue at Last Call sufficient reason for
the WG to "adopt" the document as a triage measure?
(4) Suppose the authors prefer that the WG not adopt the
document because they really want to avoid the type of review
the WG would provide and therefore remain silent in the hope
that the adoption question will just go away? Would a WG ever
wish that they have been obligated to explicitly take a position?
Really, I don't see this as any different from any other
consensus call as discussed in RFC 7282: "I'm in favor" and "I'm
opposed" statements are fairly useless as anything but
confirmation of decisions already tentatively made unless they
are accompanied by the reasons.
john