Document Blocking (Was: I-D

[Pete Resnick]

On 5/16/03 at 2:36 PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:

>[Scott Bradner:]
>>in my experience, from time to time it was the case that I did not 
>>see IESG consensus support for the concerns of a specific AD but 
>>the normal IESG process does not make it easy to get around a 
>>single AD's discuss - there is a process that was defined to do 
>>this but it has never been used, and that process would not get 
>>around a case where two ADs had issues that the rest of the IESG 
>>did not share
>
>concur. very occasionally, it seemed to me that another IESG 
>member's concerns were either unfounded or too trivial to hold up 
>passage of the document. and at least while I was there, we didn't 
>have a good way to work past those problems.

I don't understand how that jibes with:

>>The problem with the current process (as I understand it) is that 
>>it allows documents to be blocked by one or two IESG members 
>>without the consensus of the group.
>
>I don't see this as a problem at all.

You concur with the problem outlined by Scott above: There have been 
(perhaps rare) cases where someone claimed there to be a serious 
enough problem to hold up a document where the other IESG member's 
concerns were unfounded, yet there was no way to work past this hold 
up.

>Many of the issues that hold up document publication are not easily 
>understood without expertise in that particular area.

But if the expert in that area can't explain to the rest of the IESG 
why all should agree with the "discuss", then:

a) Perhaps it's unfounded
b) How on earth is that "expert" going to explain it sufficiently to 
the working group whose document is being held up.

As Dave said, "No matter how stellar the expertise of someone, if 
they cannot convince others that their views are correct, something 
is very, very wrong."

>Also, IESG does not "block" documents, it explains what is wrong 
>with them and sends them back to the working group.

But, as Scott said:

>>...since it can take an arbitrarily long time for the working group 
>>(or document authors/editors) to respond to the concerns and an 
>>arbitrarily long time for the back and forth between the AD for the 
>>working group, the AD holding the discuss, the working group 
>>chairs, and the working group the effect of the process may not be 
>>distinguishable from a decision to not publish.

Quite often, "discuss" (especially in the absence of an 
understandable explanation) ends up being, for all intents and 
purposes, identical to "block".

>It's simply infeasible to expect all of IESG to reach consensus on 
>every issue that requires a change to a document. For a deep 
>technical issue, there *might* be four people on IESG who really 
>have enough appreciation for that issue to express an informed 
>opinion - and two of those might have to stretch to understand it.

We're not talking about cases where some members of the IESG have a 
technical issue and the rest say, "Well, I don't understand that well 
enough to have a technical opinion on this, but you've convinced me 
it's a serious enough issue to warrant discussing the document 
further." That *is* consensus to discuss the document. It's when the 
objecting members *don't* explain the problem sufficiently to 
convince the others that there even *is* a serious issue. The IESG 
certainly *must* come to consensus that there is a real issue before 
stopping a document from moving along.

>A common case is to have one or two Yes votes, one or two Discuss 
>votes, and the rest No Objection. That's not a case of one or two 
>people holding up the document against an overwhelming majority. 
>It's more like a tie.

I would be deeply concerned if there were one or two Discuss, two 
Yes, and the rest No Objection *and* the Discuss voter(s) couldn't 
convince any of the Yes or No Objection people to change their votes 
to Discuss. Unfortunately, the current process allows that to hold up 
a document, and as both you and Scott have said, it has happened at 
least a few times during each of your tenors on the IESG.

>(I should clarify that IMHO the vast majority of IESG Discuss 
>concerns were well-founded and appropriate.)

That might be true. Understand, though, that given the current 
process, it is impossible to tell the difference between the ones the 
IESG considers well-founded and the one's it does not. Hence:

>>the fact that only one security AD is recorded as having a discuss 
>>on a document should not be read to say that the rest of the IESG 
>>does not support that discuss
>
>maybe now that the votes are being publicized the IESG might want to 
>consider changing that.

I agree completely. But that doesn't change the fact that in those 
cases where the IESG does not support the discuss of one or two 
members, there should be some (simple) way to over-rule the "discuss" 
and move the document forward. That's why there needs to be a process 
change.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick at qualcomm.com>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102