objectivity vs. leadership [was Re: Cross-Area Review]

[John C Klensin]

--On Friday, 25 April, 2003 11:13 -0700 Aaron Falk 
<falk at isi.edu> wrote:

> John C Klensin wrote:
>>
>> The problem is a bit similar to the one I think we have seen
>> with ADs sometimes becoming (or being forced to become)
>> advocates for particular documents rather than careful and
>> objective evaluators.
>>
>
> John-
>
> I find it interesting that you see this as a problem.  There
> are two roles for the IESG: standard reviewers and
> architectural defenders. They overlap but your comment reveals
> that the two roles motivate different behaviors.  You refer to
> ADs as "careful and objective evaluators."  But, I think of
> them also as _advocates_ of the Right Way to engineer the
> Internet

But advocating the Right Way to engineer the Internet (a role 
with which I agree, to put it mildly) may be inconsistent with 
advocating a particular document in front of the IESG just 
because one of their WG's produces it.    We have been, I think, 
over that territory before.

> We talk about having ADs as the interdisciplinary,
> architectural big picture people who are protecting the
> Internet from Bad Ideas.  I hope they have opinions, indeed, I
> expect them to.  And if I'm right, it would be a good thing,
> imo, to hear about them.  I say, let these people (IAB and
> IESG) express their opinions and adovocate their POV in open
> fora so the community at large can a) discover their POV, b)
> learn from their wisdom, and c) debate them on critical issues
> -- perhaps changing their minds or at least creating a
> community consensus opposing an opinion (which should be
> respected).  If we discover that, as a community, we don't
> like what they have to say, we can replace them.

If we disagree about anything in the above paragraph, it is only 
because I've gotten skeptical about the efficiency and precision 
of the process that determines the necessity of a replacement 
and then performs it.

> In fact, I find the lack of participation from both IESG and
> IAB members on the IETF list in general, and the IPv6 LL
> debate in particular, to be somewhat disheartening.  I think
> their opinions on the Internet architecture with respect to
> the LL issue are important and would like to know where they
> stand.

Concur

And, having agreed that I'm concerned to not have them here 
--particularly relevant given the observation that SL (taking 
that as an example) has been adopted not once but several times, 
I don't think I want to comment on your rant, at least at this 
point.

     john