Nico, On 11-Mar-20 07:45, Nico Williams wrote: > On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 12:11:47PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote: >> On 10 Mar 2020, at 10:41, Nico Williams wrote: >> >>> ...the process we have for >>> dealing with complaints is heavily biased against plaintiffs -- which is >>> probably as it should be, as otherwise we might never get anything done, >>> but then legitimate complaints don't get heard. I feel OP's >>> frustration. >> >> Nico, could you (or others) expand on this? > > Yes. Challenging consensus is difficult. People with substantive > commentary sometimes get tanks driven over them. I've a few stories of > this. One fairly recent one involving the TLS WG. > >> I really think this is worthy of a separate discussion: What is it about the >> current process that you find biased against those who bring up a dispute? > > If you get left on the rough side of consensus, whether rightly or > wrongly, and you wish to challenge this, it's really difficult. You > might have to file an appeal, Well yes. There's no way round that - you're on the losing side, which has been a bad deal throughout human history. But at least there *is* an appeal process (which in practice there wouldn't be, if we used majority voting to make decisions). That doesn't indicate bias in the process. > and if you do you'll annoy and anger > people who want their RFCs published a year ago. Again, that doesn't indicate bias in the process. >> (I take it we're talking about RFC 2026 section 6.5 >> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-6.5>.) Have you encountered a >> bias in undertaking such a dispute? > > What I've encountered is that at the limit you have to appeal or give > up, and how well things go before you get to that stage depends on how > willing WG chairs and responsible AD are to actively mediate dispute > resolution. Of course. But isn't that exactly why the appeals process exists? To put pressure on chairs and ADs to mediate? I assure you that it's much more uncomfortable for them to handle a formal appeal than to try mediation. I'll stop there because I have precisely zero knowledge of the case you cite. Brian > > The case I felt went really badly was the TLS DNSSEC extension. I don't > want to summarize that here because it will be too easy to accidentally > or unconsciously mischaracterize some detail and trigger a flame war. > > That case left many palpably angry, including myself. The resolution of > that case, BTW, was that the WG decided to drop the work item and let > each do their own extension via the ISE. IMO that is less than ideal > because if it keeps happening then we're going to have a large TLS > extension support matrix and our users will be sad. > > There's no easy way to challenge a consensus to drop a work item. What > are you gonna do, appeal asking the IAB to force a WG to take on a work > item it doesn't want to? A WG could even conclude out of spite if > forced to do something it doesn't want to. > > So there was no question of appeal, really. But I do feel that the > chairs and responsible AD did not help enough ahead of the WG throwing > its hands up in the air -- that might be an incorrect perception though, > as maybe the chairs and AD were simply unable to get the strongest > personalities on either side of the dispute to compromise, but, too, I > think they could have called the consensus rather than wait till the WG > threw in the towel on the work item. > >> I have no doubt that this process is under-used (as a chair and an AD, I had > > I've reached out to chairs and ADs a number of times before, and that > has worked, and can work where they're willing to. > > It's difficult to go beyond that to appeals. We do have to be done at > some point with any one work item. There is good will to tend to. > > The OP of this thread's parent thread clearly felt much more strongly > about their case than anyone did about the TLS DNSSEC extension. No one > in the latter case felt so aggrieved as to post a "resignation request". > >> to actively encourage people to use the dispute process instead of just >> giving up), but I've always assumed that it was just people not wanting to >> "rock the boat", or not wanting to be seen as a "complainer", or thought > > There is definitely some of that. > > Or at some point a party gets exhausted and gives up. > > Some of this is that we're a somewhat academic bunch (RFCs count as > papers now, no?) and you know how it is with academics: the lower the > stakes the worse the infighting. > >> that nobody up the chain would take them seriously. Those are serious >> problems and we should be figuring out how to address them, since people >> bringing up failures is the only way we can stop bad things from happening >> when a WG or someone in leadership gets tunnel vision and does the wrong >> thing. However, this is the first time I've heard someone express that the >> process itself is stacked against someone with a dispute. If that's true, we >> should really talk about how to fix that. > > Not sure how to make it better, except maybe thus: it should be possible > to get a review of how a dispute was resolved not so much as an appeal, > but as a way to remediate problems to help alleviate _next_ dispute. > > Nico >
