Trusting the IESG to manage the reform process (was:Re:DoingtheRight Things?)

[James Kempf]

Dave,

>     We need a framework for quality that is embraced by the
*general* IETF
>     community, so it can be enforced by the IESG, to help individual
>     *portions* of the IETF community (ie, individual working groups)
>     produce work consistent with that framework.
>

I also think we need to explicitly call out and distinguish between:

a) engineering decisions that influence quality and lack thereof,

b) engineering decisions that don't really impact quality but do
determine what ultimately goes into the spec.

In my experience, many disagreements between the WG chairs and WGs,
and IESG and WGs occur because one side views the decision as in a)
and the other in b). In the end, the decisions made in b) don't really
make much difference to the technical quality of the standard, but are
important for other reasons: compatibility with existing base,
relations with outside standards organizations, etc. Or, they may be
completely unrelated to any reason except that someone in the WG
thought of it and fights any attempt to take their idea out of the
spec.

            jak