On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Harald Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 11/11/2015 08:39 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> On 12/11/2015 03:45, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> Brian,
>>
>> Were this a reading comprehension test, you'd get a failing grade.
>> You've misinterpreted or invented, rather than dealing with the plain
>> text as I wrote it. It says what I meant.
> We disagree profoundly about what your words mean. I don't think it would be
> productive to continue mutual textual analysis.
>
> I do want to say this: We have given the ADs power of decision over what
> gets published. They take this power very seriously; that's intrinsic in
> the way they are selected and appointed. It's the first thing you learn
> as a new AD: the buck stops here. If we want to stop the ADs spending large
> amounts of time on document quality, we have to take away their power of
> decision over what gets published.
<voice=spock>This is not logical.</voice>
If an AD thinks it's his job to get a certain outcome (high quality
documents, for instance), and he can't use an effective means to achieve
the goal (blocking obviously bad documents), he'll either give up in
disgust (bad for him and the community) or try to reach the goal by
other means - which will likely take up more of his time.
In my opinion, the main job of the AD is to get others to do *their* job
- especially to make WG chairs do their job of making the WG produce
high quality drafts that reflect WG consensus and help make the Internet
better. (Yes, that's three wishes.)
Last time this thread came up, I pointed out that delegation isn't a tool
used very effectively by the IESG. If a WG goes through its entire charter
and draft development process, and the AD does not know the document
is in terrible shape until the end, then that's a problem. Either the AD should
be on top of every draft in every one of their WGs, or they should delegate
that responsibility to other people, and get help with the job. Waiting until
the very end to fix problems is the least efficient approach, and the most
frustrating as well.
The idea of assistant area director was mentioned, but immediately dismissed.
I had 1 AD tell me offline that the only task he would be willing to delegate
to an assistant was fetching coffee for him at the IETF.
Andy