My thoughts about the problems of the IETF

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On søndag, mai 04, 2003 11:44:10 +0200 Brian E Carpenter 
<brian at hursley.ibm.com> wrote:

> Keith Moore wrote:
>>
>> > Anyway as I wrote to Brian as well - I sometimes tend to trust a bigger
>> > group of people to be more objective than a smaller group of people...
>
> That is why a largish group of *cross-area* reviewers is needed.

I think the point is that the reviewers need to:

- feel responsible for reviewing
- have a cross-area background

the set who get the IETF last call fails on the first point.
the set of active WG participants will often fail on the second.

>
>>
>> often it works exactly the opposite - mob mentality sets in.
>
> That is why a review system has to be carefully constructed with
> appropriate public visibility and checks & balances.

<warning - bordering on solution space again...>
I think that group sizes below five and above 20 are problematic.
I would also like to think about letting the set of reviewers, after doing 
their independent reviews, have to discuss among themselves to form a joint 
opinion - a LOT of the "interesting" things the IESG finds comes up after 
interchanges of the sort:

- "I don't understand this area - but that goshtak looks strange"
- "Oh that - it's supposed to distim the doshes"
- "but then why aren't doshes defined in the document?"
- "oops...."

reviewers talking to each other are better than reviewers alone....

                    Harald