Maybe I missed it, but I do not recall seeing mention in this thread of a significant aspect of an ADs role – reviewing documents from outside there area – i.e., the cross-jurisdictional review step that the IESG review represents. This is a major differentiator between the IETF and most other IT standards development organizations. In most other organizations the only technical expertise applied to a proposal comes from within a working group (working party etc) – a group that will always have a limited scope of expertise The IESG’s cross-area review ensures that proposals undergo review by experts in areas that will likely not be represented within a particular working group. Documents, no matter how clearly written, produced by an individual working group, no matter the level of subject matter expertise, can benefit from careful review by experts who have expertise outside the scope of the people participating in the working group. When I was an AD (a rather long time ago now) I saw many documents where inadequate attention had been paid to security, congestion control, manageability, etc. i.e., it is not sufficient to say, as has been said during this thread, that the onus should fall on a working group chair to ensure the quality of the documents that are produced by a working group, the best documents can be made better, in terms of being used on the Internet, by the cross-area review done by the IESG. Scott