On 11/16/19 2:08 AM, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
My understanding is that most directorates have a secretary that does the assignments (secdir does, at least). By the time an AD is looking at the review next to the document it might only be a few days before the telechat where the document is up for approval, which is not really enough time to get another review in without deferring the document. Maybe we should go get that extra review and try to remove the stigma against deferring documents; I don't have a sense for how the community would feel about that.
IMO there's always going to be some conflict between an AD doing his/her job and "what the community wants", because nobody thinks his/her own document is lowering the quality of IETF standards. So the pressure to approve documents despite serious flaws, and/or to approve documents without delay (even though some documents really do require more time to review and more eyeballs to look at them), will always be there. There should not be a "stigma" associated with deferring documents if there's any reason at all to subject them to more scrutiny.
Neither IESG nor the RSE is the source of most delays, after all; most delays are in the working groups. And yeah, people compile stats on the IESG and the RSE to see how well they "perform" but those stats don't measure the most relevant things, like the quality of IETF's output, or the extent to which IETF standards are utilized, or the extent to which they're followed (this is a different thing), or (especially) the degree to which IETF standards meet the Internet's needs. There's an unfortunate tendency these days to pay more attention to quantities that are easily measured, than to those that actually matter.
And yes, the AD should look at the directorate review when it arrives, but looking only at the review and not the document being reviewed is not always enough to tell whether additional review would be valuable.
Entirely agree. I don't think IESG should presume that directorate reviews will always be sufficient, and to do so IMO is tantamount to IESG abandoning its duty.
Keith
