General comment on draft-ietf-problem-statement-00.txt

[Margaret Wasserman]

>in many cases, the AD who finds a problem has no idea who the person is 
>whose name is on the WG charter, so he doesn't have any basis on which to 
>trust him/her. remember that the set of WG chairs is more than 200 strong.
>
>The AD finding a problem trusts the AD who manages the WG to know whether 
>the WG chair can be trusted to find a solution to the identfied problem or 
>not. Delegation of trust....

Unfortunately, formal delegation can be transitive.  But, trust
is not.

In your previous mail, you indicated your belief that the IETF
is run (or should be run?) by a management team of ~225 people
(the WG chairs, IAB and IESG), not just by the 13 people in
the IESG.

It's not possible, though, to run such a large group by loose
delegation, trust and the sincere desire of everyone to do the
right thing.  A management team of over 200 people requires
clear delegation of roles, responsibilities and areas of
authority, or it won't work effectively.

Also, if you believe that the WG chairs have real power (I
actually agree), then it may be a concern that they are
selected by the IESG alone, in a closed process (if there
is any formal process at all) with no documented criteria for
selection.

Margaret