what is a problem

Pete Resnick presnick@qualcomm.com
Sun, 24 Nov 2002 15:39:18 -0500


On 11/24/02 at 2:50 PM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote:

>I agree that we cannot know what problems exist without knowing what 
>the IESG is doing.

Good.

>However I have to wonder whether we are looking for engineering 
>correctness or theoretical correctness.

Of course, I'd like both. However, like you I would settle for 
engineering (i.e., practical) correctness.

>For this reason, I believe that analysis of specific instances where 
>the process has failed in the opinions of some stakeholders would be 
>more valuable in the long term than a document describing how the 
>process should work at the IESG level.

As I said, I am not interested (for the time being) in a document 
describing how the process *should* work at an IESG level. I'm 
interested in how the process *does* work. And I think that this is a 
prerequisite to doing any "analyis of specific instances where the 
process has failed." Consider:

A while back, I had a document "stuck" in IESG review for what I 
thought was a long period of time. It was (apparently) due to one AD 
who had a concern with the document and I couldn't find out the 
specifics of the problem. Now, let's imagine the current IESG process 
is "If an AD wants to hold up publication of a document, they have to 
provide the shepherding AD with a detailed explanation of the problem 
to convey back to the document editor." If that were the case, then 
the problem might be particular ADs not following the procedures of 
the IESG. We can all think of solutions to that problem. However, 
let's instead imagine that the current process is "If an AD wants to 
hold up publication of a document, they may ask the IESG to 'discuss' 
the document, and that can go on ad infinitum." If that were the 
case, then the problem might be that the IESG process allows 
documents to languish on the say-so of only one AD. That's a 
different problem with a much different set of solutions.

The *only* way to figure out what the problem above was is first to 
look at what the IESG can and cannot do in its current procedures. 
This isn't about figuring out solutions; this is about figuring out 
what problems actually exist.

>I agree that a description of the current process will be useful at 
>some point, I just question whether it will give us useful direction 
>in determining what problems we wish to solve.

I strongly disagree. And I'm not clear how this doesn't contradict 
exactly what you said in the first sentence of your message.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick@qualcomm.com>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102