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

[Eric Rescorla]

"Harrington, David" <dbh at enterasys.com> writes:
> I don't feel that having the AD present undermines my authority. 
>
> My primary job as co-chair is to be a resource manager, making sure
> the tasks that need resources get resources. Knowing how to allocate
> resources depends on understanding the relative priorities of the
> tasks to be accomplished to achieve the strategic direction of the
> WG.
> 
> An important part of my job is to try to make sure everybody
> understands the strategic direction we are trying to folow, and then
> make sure everyone agrees with the direction within an acceptable
> margin of rough consensus.
> 
> The ADs bring an important perspective to the direction discussion -
> that the WG direction is within an acceptable margin of rough
> consensus with that of the other WGs in the area, and that of the
> IETF as a whole.
> 
> I think having the ADs present is a good thing. It helps to ensure
> that the WG doesn't go off in a direction that will later be found
> to be unacceptable, and the WG will have wasted its scarce
> resources.
I think this goes to the point I was making earlier about what the
purpose of WG chair is supposed to be.

The responsibilities of the WG chair that you enumerate above are
essentially procedural responsibilities, namely making sure that
consensus is achieved, that people do the jobs they've committed
to. By contrast, you assign the substantive responsibilities (namely,
making sure that the right thing gets done) primarily to the AD.  I'm
not surprised, therefore, that you don't think having an AD present
undermines that authority.

-Ekr