Problem: Resolution mechanisms for when working group consensusreal problems)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On fredag, mai 23, 2003 20:16:44 -0400 John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com> 
wrote:

> I don't know that I've mentioned it on this list (probably haven't, and
> it intrudes into the "solution" space a bit anyway), but I've had
> periodic thoughts that it would be a good idea to have ADs "invite"
> particularly interesting and/or problematic WGs to present their problem
> definition, work in progress, ideas, and plans at a plenary, and then
> take questions, etc.  This would act as a way to bring the whole
> community in on questions of relevance and relationship to the overall
> architecture and operation of the Internet.  Both the audience and the WG
> participants might learn a lot.  And while "contemplate process changes",
> "whine at the IESG" and "whine at the IAB" have an important place,
> injecting some community-wide _technical_ review and discussion back into
> the environment might be really helpful and interesting.

I'm a little bit worried..... not that I don't recognize any number of 
instances of the scenario above, but there are other instances.....

my counterexample is an example of something that is totally irrelevant to 
the Internet architecture per se, but has proved useful to a sharply 
limited community, has (as far as I can tell) not had any really bad 
effects on the architecture, and the only time the managing AD had to do 
some management was in order to insist that they should have some security 
(and they delivered!).

TN3270E - Extending the Telnet protocol to handle IBM 3270 terminals, or 
emulators thereof.

In the current climate of WG creation, we would have a 1000-message debate 
on the IETF list in order to take this on at all. And the debate would 
actually be more costly in terms of management time than the running of the 
activity.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to Alan Kay: "Small things should be easy. 
Big things should be possible."

[I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm totally wrong, and the TN3270E WG 
has now descended into an unmanageable cesspool of conflicts... it's been 
years since I managed it....]

                      Harald