Document Blocking (Was: I-D

Harald Tveit Alvestrand harald at alvestrand.no
Wed May 21 15:13:28 CEST 2003



--On 19. mai 2003 10:22 -0400 Margaret Wasserman <mrw at windriver.com> wrote:

> 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?

Sometimes he will, sometimes there are reasons not to....

one reason is that he wants the sponsoring AD's feedback first... after 
all, he might be wrong, or it might not be important enough. Or someone 
else might be better placed to take it - a common call is "Steve, this 
looks like a security issue to me - I'll say no-ob if you say it's OK; 
otherwise, either you or I could take it".
at times, too, the sponsoring AD has suggested that an issue would be 
better handled by the document editor or even with a note to the RFC 
Editor, rather than inviting the WG to reexamine an issue where the WG had 
a rough time coming to consensus, and the IESG only wants the result to be 
more clearly documented, not changed.
The AD for the WG is the IESG member best placed to give advice about how 
the message should go back to the WG.

and also - sending mail to a WG list is not always simple, unless you have 
interacted with that list before - just about all lists bounce mail from 
nonsubscribers, and not all of them have active moderators who will forward 
such mail, no matter what guidelines say.

>> 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?

of course the IESG could be wrong!
But they failed to be convinced by the documents.
So more discussion is needed....

>
> 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?

No. Those issues should be labelled COMMENT, not DISCUSS.




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