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

[Eric Rescorla]

Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> writes:

> > what we need is for the ADs to delegate authority to individuals
> > who would act on their behalf in specific situations.
> 
> is that wg chairs or document reviewers, both of which we have?

Certainly not document reviewers, and I would argue that in
the current environment, not chairs.

The issue, as I said earlier, is one of authority. In order to reduce
load on the AD, there has to be someone who is able to make their own
decisions without involving the AD and has the authority to back them
up (like the AD does). Now, it's often claimed that chairs have this
authority but in my experience they are reluctant to independently
exercise technical judgement in the face of WG consensus.

Reviewers, on the other hand, have the mandate to exercise judgement,
but in practice the only person who can say "no" is the AD and so even
in the best case the AD has to be hovering around to lend the reviewer
the air of authority. In the worst case, the AD is a choke point
between the reviewer and the WG. In neither case does this do that
much to reduce the load on the AD.

-Ekr