suggestions

[Marc Blanchet]

-- samedi, novembre 23, 2002 18:05:03 -0600 Dean Willis
<dean.willis@softarmor.com> wrote/a =E9crit:

>=20
>> >          P11: If a wg chair or AD is an author of a wg doc, he should
>> >          find a co-author and have his co-author make presentations.
>> >=20
>> Problem: <not sure how to formulate this
>=20
> I think the suggestion is that chairs who actually participate in the
> work may give the appearance of a conflict of interest.=20

I wrote:
Problem: The chairs and ADs might be seen to use their status for pushing
their own documents or proposals.

Which is essentially the same thing you are saying: appearance of a
conflict of interest.

>=20
> There is a tradition in other bodies that chairs act completely as
> impartial facilitators driven entirely by group consensus. They are
> often not even expected to have technical understanding of the groups
> task. The groups are general driven either by absolute consensus, or by
> a strict delegation/voting mechanism. Note that "document editors" in
> these groups have a basically stenographic task. They are not expected
> to make substantive contribution to the text during editing. Instead,
> seperate written "contributions" are made by members of the WG that the
> editor simply integrates into the previously approved text.

While it is useful and interesting to know what other standard bodies and
organisations do, it is not a binary change: we can slightly modify (I
would say "enhance") our current process without having to consider doing
like other organisations.

The proposed solution is fairly easy (unless someone tell me differently)
to implement, requires no major change, can be implemented anytime, for all
new documents/wgs.

>=20
> It relates to question of "are listed authors AUTHORS, SUPPORTERS, or
> EDITORS of a document". We aren't usually clear on a lot of things, such
> as the question of whether a specific document is really the work of a
> WG, or is the work of an individual or design team that has perhaps been
> technically reviewed and critiqued by a WG. This of course factors into
> the question of long-lived broadly scoped working groups vs. short-lived
> task-focused working groups.
>=20
> I believe it is worth really understanding the difference and cultural
> expectations here, as I suspect a lot of what makes the IETF a special
> and fun place to work as opposed to ITU/ETSI type organizations, which I
> personally find produce acutely painful work environments. Perhaps we
> should do our work just like these other organizations do=20

Noooo... We are able to engineer a "rough concensus and running code"
solution for upgrading our current process.=20
Any organisation process and policy has its strength and weaknesses. To me,
IETF process right now is ok for its purpose. We just need to adjust it a
bit, mainly to make a few things a little bit more formal or transparent.
We don't need to make an important change: just not needed, since it works
pretty well over all.

Marc.

>-- but we
> really MUST understand what we're talking about.
>=20
> --
> dean
>=20



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Marc Blanchet
Viag=E9nie
tel: +1-418-656-9254x225

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