Language Subtag Reviewer Appointment

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Tue Feb 21 19:19:16 CET 2006


At 08:00 -0500 2006-02-21, Scott Hollenbeck wrote:

>Mr. Everson has stated that he is willing to review language tags, but he is
>unwilling to moderate or maintain the ietf-languages list.

Because that function is not something I have ever done, nor is it 
something that should have been added to the reviewer's 
responsibilities. And no one ever bothered to ask me my opinion of 
this until the draft was "approved". This is NOT my fault.

>An Area Director can not unilaterally change an approved Internet-Draft.
>Ted and I are not willing to appoint a reviewer who is not willing to
>perform the duties described in the document.

If you people are more concerned about your rules and processes than 
in the actual content of the work, then there are problems indeed 
with your organization. I am not willing to take on the responsiblity 
to manage an IESG-rule-bound list precisely because of all the crap 
we have had to put up with Mr Morfin. It is YOUR process that is 
broken, Mr Hollenbeck, and it is rather nasty of you to be 
high-handed about not being willing to appoint me to do a job I have 
been doing for years because I am not willing to take on additional 
responsibilities that no one informed me about until it was already 
set in stone. I assure you I would have made my views clear then. 
Don't try to make *me* the bad-guy here.

>1. Revise the document, which will mean pulling it out of the RFC Editor
>queue and starting a new last call and IESG approval process. I am
>suggesting that a new last call etc. is required because this document was
>approved for publication as a Best Current Practice (BCP) document, and
>changing one of the practices is not a trivial matter.

This *is* a trivial matter, and your "last call" should state 
explicitly that the ONLY thing on the table up for approval is the 
one or two sentences it will take to correct the error in 
responsibility assignment which exists in the document. This is NOT a 
large technical change. It is administrative, and should be 
fast-tracked. Your organization should do this in order to meet the 
urgent market need for this RFC.

>2. Leave the document alone and appoint a reviewer who is willing to
>delegate list management duties.  There has been some debate over whether or
>not the reviewer has the authority to delegate administrative tasks, but I
>believe that there are a number of precedents in place to support such a
>decision.

I do not want to make a delegation choice either. Why should I -- or 
any language tag reviewer -- be considered competent to do this? This 
is not what a reviewer is chosen for. You need to fix the document, 
which conflates responsibilities in ways which do not make any sense 
at all.

That's my opinion.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com


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