"Adult supervision"

[Ted Lemon]

> And WGs need to take responsibility for this
> rather than expecting to be told every detail about how to do it.

The problem I am referring to is a meta-level higher than that.   In 
the particular case I'm considering, the proponents of a particular 
draft considered every one of the points that the "knowledgable person" 
raised, and came up with a different conclusion than the "knowledgable 
person" did.   It is not that they hadn't considered the design issues, 
but rather that they did not agree about the tradeoffs.

Then the "knowledgable person" argued the working group to a 
standstill, and the chair went with the "knowledgable person's" 
opinion, not because he agreed that it was right, but because he didn't 
want to spend two years fighting about it.   Note that in this case the 
matter didn't even go to the IESG - it was dropped before that, out of 
a belief that it wasn't going to fly.

We can't operate successfully if this is the process by which "bad 
ideas" are rejected.   The answer has to be "here are the technical 
reasons why you have to evaluate the tradeoffs this way, and here is 
the process that we went through to determine that this way of 
evaluating the tradeoffs is actually right, and not just my way."

I don't mean to criticize the IESG, the WG chair, or really even the 
"knowledgable person" in this case.   I think everybody was trying to 
do the right thing.   But unfortunately, the cost of controversy was 
weighed much to high in the decision, and the value of solving the 
problem in the best way didn't seem to have been weighed very much at 
all.

Keith has pointed out that it took a long time (four years) to advance 
his draft.   It took me four years to advance the classless static 
routes draft.   Ouch.   It would have been nice if we could have 
accomplished the same level of quality work in less time, but in fact 
every time the draft was held back, the outcome was a better draft.   I 
suspect Keith's experience was similar.   My point is that sometimes 
you just have to suck it up and spend the time to get your ideas down 
on paper and get consensus on them, even if it takes a bloody long time.