Document Blocking (Was: I-D

[Keith Moore]

> >Right, but IESG has timeouts in place for almost all phases of its 
> >deliberative process.   It's the WG that can hold up things for 
> >arbitrary amounts of time (sometimes because the authors and/or 
> >chair are sitting on the document and the WG doesn't know what is 
> >happening, sometimes because the WG refuses to make changes and 
> >doesn't know what to do next).
> 
> Let's not get into finger pointing here. We both know of situations 
> where a document is stuck in the WG (for both unreasonable and 
> reasonable cause), we both know of situations where the IESG has 
> ignored timeouts (for both unreasonable and reasonable cause),

actually, no.  I don't know of a case where the latter has occurred.

> and we both know of cases where the token has gotten lost (which can 
> occur even now with the tracker, when there is a discuss item that 
> the WG doesn't understand and can't get enough feedback to fix). 
> We've been talking about unsticking at one point, within the IESG. 
> It is a separate problem to deal with unsticking within the WG, 
> which is probably even trickier.

I'm all for unsticking things.  But I suspect we're to the point that IESG is
largely unstuck, and that most of the documents that get stuck are stuck
either within a WG or because of poor communications.  So I'm interested in
focusing on these sources of stickiness.  Also, I think that unsticking IESG
is better left to IESG - i.e. to people who understand the subtleties of that
environment, and who have more than adequate interest in working more
effectively.

> >(Even before we had public disclosure of the IESG ballots, new ADs 
> >learned fairly quickly that raising substantial objections could 
> >cost them both in terms of ease of working with other IESG peoople, 
> >and in temrs of the time spent in discussion with the relevant 
> >parties to try to work out the differences. So there's a significant 
> >incentive to avoid raising non-trivial objections, sometimes even 
> >when they're fairly important. One result is that ADs raise trivial 
> >objections when more serious objections are really warranted.)
> 
> I've heard this from several former ADs, and perhaps it indicates a 
> further problem: The idea that because one AD raises substantial 
> objections, other ADs would make life difficult for him or her, and 
> that trivial objections do not cause that, is unbelievably bad. It is 
> a further indication of distrust among the ADs in the IESG, the very 
> same thing that would make anyone think that "a way to stop bad 
> things from happening" type of veto is necessary. I find the idea 
> that any AD would behave this way instant grounds for recall. 

I agree with you that ADs don't (or at least didn't when I was on IESG) always
have enough trust of one another.  I hope things are better now, but I suspect
some of the distrust is inherent in the combination of diversity of
backgrounds and workload.  Regarding the veto and recall, I don't follow what
you are saying.

I don't know that anyone deliberately tried to make life difficult for me
because I raised technical objections when I was on IESG.  I do think there
was an atmosphere of "hey, we have enough work to do as it is, please don't
make things more difficult unless you have a good reason" along with
(sometimes) a failure to recognize good reasons.

> >>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.
> >
> >That's not the way it works. Since every Discuss vote has to be 
> >explicitly changed before the document can move forward, issues get 
> >resolved faster when there are fewer Discuss votes, and the polite 
> >thing to do is to not vote Discuss when someone else has already 
> >raised the same objection. so if you get multiple Discuss votes only 
> >when there is a very strong and widespread objection to a document, 
> >or when there are widely varying objections to a document.
> 
> I know that's not the way it works now. But now that the process is 
> becoming more public (due to the tracker), I really think it needs to 
> be that way. At the very least, you should never see a single Discuss 
> and two Yes votes; that would be an indication (to an outside 
> observer) of serious disagreement in the IESG and something that 
> needs explanation.

Well, again, I think changes to how IESG works internally are better left for
IESG to make.  They have plenty of incentive and they are more likely to
understand the effects of those changes than non-members or even former members.

Keith