Greetings, all, I will add my voice to the chorus of "+1, Melinda", and thank you very much for putting it more eloquently than I ever could on a Thursday. Cheers, Brian > On 24 Jul 2019, at 23:16, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi, all: > > Rich's point about the lack of additional voices from the dais > was well-taken, and given that it's clear that one source of > frustration among IETFers is a lack of information, I thought > it might (or possibly not, but it's worth a try) be helpful to > provide some additional perspective from the front of the room. > I also want to be clear that I'm speaking only for myself, and > while I've discussed a few of these things with other IAB members > I haven't discussed all of them. Of the issues I have raised > there really isn't anything resembling consensus - most > of this may, in fact, be very much a minority viewpoint. But, I > do think we need to improve our transparency where we can, and I > hope this helps provide an additional view of where we are and > how we got here. > > First, for those of us not on the RSOC, what transpires between > the RSOC and the RSE is completely opaque. To me, it resembles > a black box, and it's not the case that we have some inside > information that we're hiding from you. Most of us just don't > know much. I think that this is a very good thing - > the RSOC members have domain expertise and a specific interest > in working with the RSE and RPC to get our documents published. > I suspect that most of us would agree that we don't want the IAB > micromanaging the RSOC or the RSE. Personally, I do trust the RSOC > and feel that what's gone wrong here is the result of structural > problems, a terrible confluence of events, and possibly some > misjudgments (again, I have no information about this, I'm just guessing > based on pretty much the same information you all have). > > However, this lack of information has led to a situation in which the > IAB is *accountable* for RFC publication but not *responsible*, in the > sense that we aren't actually in a position to know how things are > going or influence much, but the buck still stops with us. I think this > is a structural problem, because there aren't really mechanisms > there that allow us to respond to problems as they develop (or even > be aware of them). I hope this isn't seen as an argument for the IAB to > be involved in (micro)managing the RFC publication process, because it's > not, it's just an observation about something I think can and should be > fixed through structural changes. > > It's also the case that in general we usually try to figure out what's > inside black boxes by shaking them, tilting them, and basically trying > to affect the inside of the box in ways that force it to reveal > something about its contents. I've personally been reluctant to try to > figure out what's inside this black box because I've been worried that > the process of working through it might lead to bruising or other > damage, which I did not want to cause to happen. This may have looked > like disengagement or lack of concern, and for that I apologize, both to > the community and specifically to Heather. > > On the rfc++ BOF, the IAB came out of it completely abashed. We > knew we'd messed up, we put out a statement explaining where we thought > we'd made mistakes, left the ball in Heather's court, and basically > never talked of it again. I think this is another mistake we made - > we should have followed up personally with Heather. I did not, for > which I also apologize.
