Twice in as many days I've seen folks make the argument that a WG
participant ought not bring up an issue during IETF Last Call that was
already discussed in the WG because that participant "lost the argument"
in the WG. I hate the construction, and I think even making the claim
harms the process.
In one case, it appears that the chair judged that the WG couldn't come
to consensus on a definitive statement and therefore concluded that a
compromise statement was appropriate. It is quite appropriate for WG
participants to say during Last Call, "We think the chair made an error.
There remains a technical failing in this document that is not
appropriately addressed by the compromise language. We tried to convince
the chair of this, to no avail, and hope that others in the community
review this particular point and maybe try to make the case clearer than
we were able to." That's going to require some rehashing, though
hopefully the chair and/or AD can fairly summarize the arguments and why
they came to the conclusion they did, which should shorten the
discussion. But the points need to be brought out, the in-the-rough WG
participants should be able to identify where the perceived error was
made, and the community can put in its two cents. You can't say, at this
point, that anyone "lost the argument", and certainly not that they
ought to be quiet.
(In that particular case, I've also seen people say, "I give up; I'm not
discussing it anymore". That's a pain, since the issue hasn't gone away,
even if the proponent has, so the chair or AD is left to make sure it
gets dealt with without help. We really need to stop that.)
In the other case, my understanding is that the chair and/or AD judged
that a particular set of functionality was outside of the scope of the
document and/or chartered-work in question. The WG participant who felt
that the functionality should be in-scope and is perfectly within bounds
to make the case that the functionality is somehow necessary during Last
Call. The chair and/or AD should summarize why they judged the
functionality to be out of scope. Others in the community might want to
take up the argument and explain why it should be added. But again,
saying that the participant cannot make an argument that was "not won"
in the WG is unreasonable.
Do note that in both cases, I think it's only fair that the person
bringing up the issue clearly states what's going on. For instance, in
the second case the person should really have said, "This was judged
out-of-scope by the WG/chair, but I think it ought not be out-of-scope
because of X, Y, and Z". Simply saying, "Please make this change to the
document" as if it were never discussed before is not helpful to the
rest of the list during Last Call.
In any event, I think it's vital that the chair and/or AD actively
manage the Last Call discussion when these sorts of things happen. They
are the judges of consensus, and they are the ones that are going to
have to make the call in the end, so having them explain their thinking
is vital.
End of rant.
pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478