Subject: Re: My test question for tonight's plenary

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 13:55:32 -0500

Hi Charlie.

> Hello folks,

> I have talked to a lot of working group chairs and document authors.
> They complain about the IESG.  I ask them why they don't raise their
> issues at the IESG plenary.  The answer is always the same:
>     "It does not pay to piss off the IESG".

> >From this, I infer:
> - The IESG plenary is broken as a method for public input, at
>    least to some degree
> - The IESG is seen as authoritarian and vengeful.
> - You are not hearing crucial feedback that you need to thrive.

> Please comment at the plenary.  You can read aloud my e-mail, and if
> you promise not to be pissed off at me you can attribute it to me.

Apologies for not bringing this up last night, but as you know we got
pressed for time.

The statement "It does not pay to piss off the IESG" really concerns
me. It implies that the IESG (as a body) somehow holds grudges or
takes things to a personal level. That is clearly unacceptable, and if
it is happening, must be stopped. If there are cases where this is
happening, or individuals believe it is happening, the issue needs to
be brought to the attention of the IESG and dealt with appropriately.

If what you are saying is that individual ADs (as opposed to the IESG
as a body) hold grudges, that again is not acceptable, but is harder
to deny cannot or does not happen, given that this involves
individuals, personalities, etc. But if it is happening, I would hope
that folk feel comfortable finding other ways of approaching the IESG
members than through a single AD.

There are number of ADs that are quite open to being approached
individually. I am personally willing to talk to anyone one-on-one if
they have an issue that they don't believe is being handled properly
by some other individual AD or by the IESG as a whole. I am certain
that the other ADs hold a similar view. So, if there are cases where
the above is believed to be happening, *please* approach one or more
other ADs and discuss the issue. I *personally* can't do anything
about a problem if *I* don't know about it.

To go a bit further on this point, I sense that there is at least some
feeling in the community that the formal appeals process doesn't work.
I.e., appeals don't generally fix underlying problems, are too high a
hurdle, cause too much damage whatever the outcome, take too long and
become a waste of time, etc.

So, I suspect there is a sense that problems sometimes arise where
some of the community feels like the wrong thing is happening, but
they have no recourse and it doesn't get fixed. Again, I encourage
folk to contact individual ADs (if the issues are too personal to
discuss publically), or be brought up in a more public fashion. The
first step towards dealing with substantive issues is to get them out
on the table so people know about them.

Thomas

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:03:43 -0500

I've copied the new list -- should we drop the IETF list out of
this discussion or is it of broad enough interest?

--On Friday, 22 November, 2002 13:55 -0500 Thomas Narten
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> The statement "It does not pay to piss off the IESG" really
> concerns me. It implies that the IESG (as a body) somehow
> holds grudges or takes things to a personal level. That is
> clearly unacceptable, and if it is happening, must be stopped.
>...
> If what you are saying is that individual ADs (as opposed to
> the IESG as a body) hold grudges, that again is not
> acceptable, but is harder to deny cannot or does not happen,
>...

Thomas,

I think this is helpful.   Let me give you my cut on
grudge-holding:

I know most of you (IESG members) fairly well.  I believe that,
at one time or another, I have annoyed most of you, typically by
looking at a problem from a different angle than yours and
insisting that you examine a protocol or principle from that
angle as well... especially when I have done that with a
protocol or document that one or more of you wish would just go
quietly away.

I have seen no evidence of vengeful, or other grudge-induced,
behavior from the IESG and no behavior from individual ADs that
I cannot explain in other ways.   But "explain in other ways" is
key -- I've tended to find things to sympathize with on both
sides even when there are what appear to be deep personal feuds
_within_ the IESG and seeing those tensions is one of the things
that has led me to conclude that, until we change the workload
and stress equations, nothing else is going to make much
difference over a medium to long term (of course, if the IESG
deteriorates into warring factions, getting rid of all of the
members of one faction, either faction, will improve things for
a while).

But other explanations are possible and suspicious people will
consider them.   When some documents move forward smoothly and
others go into long delays, it is natural to look for
explanations.  And, if trust has deteriorated, things like the
tracker may not help: knowing where and with whom something is
stuck is important, but killing (or delaying indefinitely) a
document through love and lavish attention doesn't leave it any
less dead than killing it because the AD is annoyed at the
author. Nor is it less dead than it would be because the AD has
bad intuitions about the document that haven't quite jelled and
has decided to foot-drag until those intuitions reach the stage
where they can be explained to the rest of the IESG or to the
author/WG.

And that, in turn, can lead to a conclusion that it is unwise to
call the IESG's attention to oneself --as distinct from one's
work-- whether by "pissing you off" or otherwise doing things
that might rate special attention.

> individually. I am personally willing to talk to anyone
> one-on-one if they have an issue that they don't believe is
> being handled properly by some other individual AD or by the
> IESG as a whole. I am certain that the other ADs hold a
> similar view. So, if there are cases where the above is
> believed to be happening, *please* approach one or more other
> ADs and discuss the issue. I *personally* can't do anything

But note that, if the IESG gets to the point that some AD is
singled out by others as "he (or she) is the real problem here",
and you have been on the IESG long enough to see several targets
of that conclusion, all raising this sort of issue does is to
reinforce existing prejudices and conclusions or to be dismissed
because of them.   This is a _hard_ problem.
 
> To go a bit further on this point, I sense that there is at
> least some feeling in the community that the formal appeals
> process doesn't work. I.e., appeals don't generally fix
> underlying problems, are too high a hurdle, cause too much
> damage whatever the outcome, take too long and become a waste
> of time, etc.

Yep.  I'm going to try to address this in another note.

> So, I suspect there is a sense that problems sometimes arise
> where some of the community feels like the wrong thing is
> happening, but they have no recourse and it doesn't get fixed.
> Again, I encourage folk to contact individual ADs (if the
> issues are too personal to discuss publically), or be brought
> up in a more public fashion. The first step towards dealing
> with substantive issues is to get them out on the table so
> people know about them.

But what appears to happen, often, is that discussions of this
type with individual ADs, or even early-stage appeal discussions
with the IETF Chair, slide into the "secret negotiations"
pattern that both I and Geoff and Marshall have singled out as a
problem, although from different perspectives.  Then it feels as
if an appeal is the _only_ way to try to force the IESG (and
IAB, if necessary) to look at the real issue and expose their
thinking.  And that, as you imply, is very costly to all
involved, especially when the IESG responds defensively and the
IAB takes the procedural position that the IESG appears to have
examined the issues and taken a plausible position given that
examination.

regards,
    john