Document Blocking (Was: I-D

[Margaret Wasserman]

At 12:02 PM 5/19/2003 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>(tangential..... I am sometimes frustrated that WGs seem to take a Discuss 
>as "declaration from on high that a technical decision needs to be 
>changed", rather than as a challenge asking them to explain their 
>positions better;

I agree with other comments that this could be made clearer in
how IESG DISCUSS comments are communicated to the WG.  For
example, why doesnt' the IESG member with the DISCUSS send a
message directly to the WG raising the issue?

>after all, what has happened is that the IESG has failed to understand 
>that the WG position is reasonable; either the WG is wrong, or the 
>documents have insufficient convincing power - increasing the convincing 
>power SHOULD be the right answer in some cases. But that seems rare....)

Why are there only two choices that "the WG is wrong, or the
documents have insufficient convincing power"?  While I don't
think it happens very often, couldn't the IESG be wrong?

Also, some AD review comments and DISCUSS comments are really
about matters of taste -- the belief that a section should be
removed from a document because it is redundant (not wrong,
just redundant), the opinion that some historical note should be
added explaining why something was done a particular way, etc.
In those cases, there may be no right or wrong.  In general,
the IESG wins because they can block publication of the document.
Do you think that's reasonable?

Margaret