Subject: IESG Area Structure and Last night's missing question (was: Re: Privacy, outages, and plenary)

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 2015 10:18:50 -0500

Jari,

The question I was trying to ask via Jabber during the plenary
was about the Apps + RealTime -> ART reorganization.   When that
was announced a year or so ago along with the decision to reduce
the number of ADs in the combined area from four to three, my
understanding was that the IESG intended to further review the
situation, make a longer-term plan, and discuss it with the
community.   That evaluation and plan is particularly important
to those of us who believe that, long-term, areas with three or
more ADs tend to be too complex to follow and reduce the
possibility for accountability.  

AFAICT, we haven't heard more on that subject from the IESG
since the "new IESG" was seated in March.

I can't speak for others, but I, at least, would like to hear
from the IESG about this and, because it might affect some of
our evaluations of incumbents for the Nomcom, hear soon.

    john

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 09:49:28 +0900

John,

Thanks for a good question. I’m working with the IESG
to provide you an answer.

Jari

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 15:31:55 +0900

John,

This answer is my impression of the situation, informed by a
brief discussion with the IESG. But I’m speaking only for
myself, and in any case there is more to this topic. Other
ADs may send additional thoughts. ART ADs in particular
may have views about how well the structure works for them…

There’s a couple of aspects to the ART area situation. Whether
additional coordination among three (vs. two) ADs is working
out. Whether the workload is appropriate for three (vs. four or
two) ADs. And so on. My perception is that the new system
is working relatively well, but given that people have been
in their new roles for only some time, it may be too early
to draw those conclusions. And the DISPATCH/APPSAWG
merge is brand new in this meeting, so it will take some
time to gather experience about that as well.

We will continue to track this and other workings of the
IESG and take action as needed.

One aspect that the whole IESG is already quite happy about
was that we’re all quite pleased with our increased ability to
be flexible as far as AD responsibilities, shepherding WGs
out-of-area and being able to increase or decrease personnel
in an area as needs arise. We do want to make long-term
changes, but we see that the the first step is maintaining the
flexibility to be able to adapt to changes in workload and
*not* making too many concrete long-term plans.

Also, the IESG has internally had a lot of discussion about
finding ways to transform AD role so that it can be done while
also having significant day job responsibilities. This would
increase the pool of potential AD candidates and would place
IETF management work closer to daily life in networking.
This has been a difficult thing for us to find solutions to,
although I would observe that there are several ADs who
are succeeding in such sharing of responsibilities. We continue
to try to find solutions, particularly around further decentralising
the IETF organisations. However, the areas are quite
different in how they work, so solutions in this space have
traditionally been different for different ADs. For instance,
the need and practices around the use of review directorates
differ wildly.

Another topic that the IESG has had internal discussions
about is whether we could make the group radically smaller,
making internal coordination more efficient and perhaps
as a side effect forcing some tasks out of the IESG. The
ADs had wildly different perspectives into this, but it is
no longer a direction that we’re considering. I’d say that
the majority of the ADs are more focused on current
or slightly smaller IESG size, but with less workload
per person.

In short, we’ve done some work in this space but also
a lot of work remains. One additional aspect that we have
not considered yet is whether the current flexible operating
model ends up impacting job descriptions for the nomcom,
perhaps asking for more generalists than people with deep
expertise in the specific working groups they’d end up
managing.

Some specifics:

> That evaluation and plan is particularly important

Some of us wanted to understand better your thinking here,
John. Why do you believe that three ADs implies those things?
Is it the additional coordination that you envision?

Jari

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 23:02:22 +0900

So, I'm not an ART AD ...

> time to gather experience about that as well.

It's probably too early to tell whether three ADs is a good plan or a bad
plan, based on experience.

RTG was replacing a three-term AD with two first-term ADs, and at least in
TSV, the first year is a lot of "what the heck is going on THERE???", so
things would likely be easier to analyze next year. ART was combining two
existing areas with a fair amount of cultural difference as they moved to
three ADs, so it's likely hard to figure out whether something change
because of the area combination, or because ART has three ADs. Again,
please check back next year.

> the need and practices around the use of review directorates

It is my opinion that if there are changes in time commitments required for
any specific AD role, this will likely be the result of something the ADs
in that area did, not something the IESG as a whole did.

> as a side effect forcing some tasks out of the IESG.

Before the Cancun retreat (when we were beginning to talk about
smallerizing), we asked Harald to talk with us on an informal telechat
about his experience with structural changes, and especially about the
long-expired
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-iesg-alvestrand-twolevel-00.txt.
Because we had a passionate advocate for a significantly smaller IESG on
the IESG, I had hopes that we would look at something like that proposal
(and after Harald described the obstacles that the proposal encountered, I
had thoughts about changes that might have made it workable).

There was enough tension between the idea of a significantly smaller IESG
and the idea of significant time commitment reduction for all AD positions
that we couldn't make progress in either direction.

> The

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 08:17:58 +1300

> So, I'm not an ART AD ...

and I'm not an AD of any kind...

> that we couldn't make progress in either direction

There's a third apex to that triangle: the tension between trusting WG chairs
to take full responsibility and the IESG having final responsibility for
document quality.

I don't think we can make a major change to the IESG workload without tackling
that issue too. It's hard to say exactly what fraction of the IESG's time is
spent finding and fixing DISCUSS-worthy problems in drafts, but reducing that
fraction to zero would certainly have an impact.

   Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 07:15:27 -0500

On 11/05/2015 02:17 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> spent finding and fixing DISCUSS-worthy problems in drafts,

Not nearly enough, as far as I can tell.   RFC quality (at least for the 
topics I care about) seems to have dropped considerably.

In particular, very few working groups are either sufficiently competent 
or sufficiently diligent to give adequate consideration to issues 
outside of their immediate scope that are created or exacerbated by 
their output.

Keith

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 12:35:17 -0000

Without pointing fingers at you, Keith, I want to observe that I've heard your comment from a number of 

> RFC quality (at least for the topics I care about) seems to have
> dropped considerably.

If you care about the topics and you care about the quality of the RFCs, there is something (that I think is) obvious you can do about it: participate in the development and review of the documents.

Of course, everyone is really busy, but someone has to do the work. 

Adrian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 07:44:54 -0500

> Of course, everyone is really busy, but someone has to do the work.

I am indeed participating in development and review of several 
documents, though like many others, I have less time to invest in IETF 
than I once did.   (and there seems to be less return on that investment 
than in the past)

One thing that seems to have changed in the last 20 years or so - the 
IETF is producing more documents, on a much wider variety of topics, 
with the number of active participants about the same or fewer (at least 
if one uses the number of people who attend meetings as an indicator for 
the number of active participants).   Sadly, this increased number of 
documents is treated as a sign of progress.

Keith

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 2015 12:44:37 -0900

I've recently been through several chartering efforts
and was quite surprised by the amount of effort ADs now put
into getting the charters sorted out, and correct.  It
is very much appreciated but I do suspect one consequence
of this is that we're producing extremely high-quality
charters but the working group process and product is actually
not much improved.  That is to say, IESG time and attention
are scarce and extremely valuable and I suspect that putting
this much effort into charters is not an optimal allocation
of these scarce resources, in the sense that it's consuming
more calories but doesn't appear to be leading to better
outcomes.

I'm very interested in what Lars is doing in the IRTF
(letting efforts go forward but waiting a year to charter,
to see if the group is successful in identifying a problem
and appears to be capable of addressing that problem) but
given that it depends on the ability to say "no" to work
already underway it seems unlikely to be successful in an
IETF where underperforming working group chairs aren't
fired and where it's nearly impossible to shut down even a
working group that's bound and determined to fail.  So,
that doesn't seem to be an approach that's likely to translate
well to the broader IETF.

It also seems to me that the proliferation of the problem
statement/architecture/requirements/gap analysis pattern is
a problem.  You wouldn't think that now that we're producing
tightly-focused, high-quality working group charters and
that in some cases it's taking several years to charter a
new working group we'd need problem statement documents,
but we're getting them anyway.  It's not that we never need
a problem statement document, or an architecture, or a
separate requirements draft, or a gap analysis, but we
certainly don't need them nearly as often as we're getting
them, and I think they represent a significant part of the
problem with getting work done in a timely way.  I think we'd
be well-served by a little more caution about committing
to those sorts of documents.

To be honest I think the core problem is that we've seen
a massive influx of participants whose job is to produce
standards - that's what they do.  So they're being
incentivized to write lots and lots and lots and lots and
lots of internet drafts and to push very hard on chartering
new working groups.  And as has been noted quite often
before, the increased IESG workload has tended to limit
the candidate pool for AD positions to those who can work
full-time on standards, which is a very, very bad thing,
both because it's going to tend to exclude very qualified
people whose main job is not standards but also because
it means that the people who are selected are going to tend
to be have a more positive attitude (or at least be less
unhappy with) the IETF's gradual transformation into a
more conventional standards body.

The IETF structure and processes are largely based on how
they were during a time when the focus was on producing useful
things.  I do think we need to adapt to the new reality, although
I don't know what that means in practice.  Personally, I'd like
to see working group efforts tied more closely to implementation
even though that won't solve the bigger problems around participant
incentives (although wouldn't it be *great* to have more implementers
involved?) and the proliferation of unhelpful and occasionally
windbaggy documents.  But, as John Chambers likes to say, we need to
live in the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.

Melinda

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 07:53:13 +0900

I'd actually prefer that *Proposed Standard* RFCs would drop in "quality",
and the number of documents being advanced to IS (with a higher quality) went
up.

The bar between ID -> PS is already too high in my opinion, and it
contributes to the IETF "being too slow".  It means ADs are being excessively
loaded.

That is, I don't know what to make of "RFC quality" -- even those words
re-inforce the external view that all our documents are equivalent, and
I know that Keith and Adrian know that isn't true.

I also, (like Persig's Phaedrus) realize that quality is what you make of it,
and it's very hard to quantify.  So if we were ask what the quality of the
STD stream, it might be difficult to do that without some quantifiable
measures.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 08:04:31 +0900

thank you melinda; a really good message.

follow the money.  as you say, a lot of time is required.  add to that
expensive travel etc. and we're left with vendors and standards writers
[0].

sprints, hackathons etc. are a small and welcome attempt at re-injecting
the culture of implementation and use realities.  but the core work,
wgs, iesg, ... is moribund and, as you say more politely, increasingly
dominated by professional managers and document hacks.

until the community' communicates to the nomcom, iesg, and iab that a
change to a more reality and implementation based culture is needed, the
ITUification of the ietf will continue; we will have even more managers,
document inflators, ....  until we send a message by replacing some
underperforming wg chairs, moribund wgs will abound.

the nomcom and the i* need to take some mean pills.  and we need to tell
them it's not only ok, but demanded.

    "If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long
     and mostly about paddlewheel design."  -- Maciej Ceglowski

randy

[0] https://archive.psg.com/051000.ccr-ivtf.html

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 10:59:06 +0900

> underperforming wg chairs, moribund wgs will abound.

I think that I can say that the nomcom has heard this in multiple ways.
What we can *do* about it, is another question.

The nomcom used to ask the question:
    "The AD job is a 50% commitment" (and the joke was: 50% of an 80 hour week)
    "Are you going to be able to make this level of commitment?"

The nomcom now asks a different question:
    "The AD job is supposed to be a 50% commitment, but has grown.
    What will you do to return it to a 50% commitment?"

There is a big concern that you and others have expressed that we are only
able to have ADs from big companies, that small companies can not afford the
time to provide an AD... or a WG chair... or a core document editor.

So putting the quality where the quality belongs: at the Internet Standards
level, is I think, important.

    > them it's not only ok, but demanded.

The nomcom doesn't replace WG chairs, it replaces ADs that don't replace WG
chairs... but the set of people that can effectively (i.e. are "confirmable")
become ADs is... the set of WG chairs, plus some secretaries.   So another
reason to replace chairs more often is so that more people become experienced
enough to become ADs.

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 21:27:28 -0500

> What we can *do* about it, is another question.

Agreed - the set of candidates and the spread among them provides a limited
range of choice.  There are always trade-offs and it's hard to prioritize a
single
issue among all of them.

> time to provide an AD... or a WG chair... or a core document editor.

This is a serious problem.  I'm also concerned that ADs and the IESG have
time and focus to think about the steering and future strategy and
improvement
part.   There's a large part of the AD job which is the daily "making the
donuts"
(aka progressing the drafts) but that is only a piece of the job.

> level, is I think, important.

How many people on this list have encourage that an RFC go to Internet
Standard?
Who can articulate why it is useful?  I've tried to encourage on one
document when
I saw that a bis could happen anyway and there weren't significant normative
dependencies.  When there is non-trivial work to verify the interoperable
implementations
of each aspect, the benefit of doing the work needs to be better understood
by
the community.

I do think that the IETF would be very well served by having many more
Internet
Standards RFC - but we have to find a way to motivate people to do the
work.  Trying
to reduce the work has been done (2-level instead of 3, ability to do
status-changes,
etc.) but I don't see it being sufficient.

> reason to replace chairs more often is so that more people become

We *have* to grow more WG chairs and secretaries and encourage others to try
shepherding a draft or more to start learning more about the process.  We
also need
to have some better training on the *why* behind much of the process,
because
there's a lot of "one size doesn't fit all" and without understanding the
reasons and
motivations, it's easy to do the process and fail to meet the goals.

I know that I tend to think that we have a lot of the same WG chairs; when
I did
numbers for Routing, we have 11 new WG chairs out of 45 total since I
became an
AD.

Regards,
Alia

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 11:34:47 +0900

Alia Atlas <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > We *have* to grow more WG chairs and secretaries and encourage others
    > to try shepherding a draft or more to start learning more about the
    > process.  We also need to have some better training on the *why* behind
    > much of the process, because
    > there's a lot of "one size doesn't fit all" and without understanding
    > the reasons and

    > I know that I tend to think that we have a lot of the same WG chairs;
    > when I did
    > became an AD.

Yes... but what if you remove Adrian, and Stewart, and other people who have
already been ADs or IAB or ... from the list...

I don't a problem with having an out-of-WG document shepherd.
There might be more challenges at times, but I think that will be good.

I would like some larger carrot for being document shepherd.
I would love to have a(n ietf-wide) list of people willing to be a shepherd
that I could draw upon.

At one point we discussed whether documents should always ACK WG chairs
and Shephards by default. I.e. the RFC editor would put it it if it was
missing.

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 21:43:52 -0500

Hi Melinda,

> more calories but doesn't appear to be leading to better

I think that the chartering effort is when there's a great opportunity
to affect how the WG focuses and how productive it is.  I know that
for both BIER and DETNET, spending time on the chartering let us
clarify that we wanted WGs that were going to produce implementable
work within two years.  It's a chance to explicitly state that work on
use-cases or requirements can be captured well in ephemeral documents
that will not be permanently published as RFCs.

Similarly, rechartering is a chance to clearly make decisions about the
direction that work should go and clearly state decisions about disputes
that may have paralyzed the WG.

While I agree that it may take time to have a clear and better outcome,
I have been startled and pleased by how efficacious rechartering has been.
NVO3 was able to focus on its direction; granted, now we have too many
encapsulations but the paralyzing discussions about control-plane
(distributed
vs. orchestrated and so on) went away.   RTGWG is successfully serving
to incubate new ideas and has taken up a number of YANG drafts that
had no other appropriate place to be in Routing.

I do feel like the chartering time is one where there is significant
leverage
to be gained by focused AD effort.  I am curious to hear where you think
an AD should be better spending her or his time.

> well to the broader IETF.

Well, think about how focused many of the drafts in preparation for
a BOF are.  With the IRTF, there isn't really an expectation of getting
something useful and implementable within a moderate time-frame.

> to those sorts of documents.

Absolutely!  I completely agree and am happy that many of the
ADs and IESG are pushing back against these during chartering
or rechartering and when drafts come to the IESG.  Unfortunately,
by the time a draft gets to the IESG, there's a lot of pressure from
WG consensus, the time spent, and the "but does it do any harm"
front.

> more conventional standards body.

I would add that as people get more involved with the IETF, there
may be less time to spend on other things.  I agree with the problems
though different environments encourage that less than others.

It's one thing to see the problem - but what would be useful is ideas
on how to resist and improve?

> live in the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.

I have sometimes regretted that not all WGs are like IDR, which requires
at least two implementations before progressing a PS draft.

It would be great to have more implementers involved.  That means
being more dependent on the mailing lists and less on in-person meetings
and making it clearer how to participate with a low time-commitment and
making it easier to be connected into the community for trading of ideas
and getting support.  We might also need to do outreach so that the
implementers know they are welcome and the IETF isn't yet practiced or
good at that.

Regards,
Alia

Melinda

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 21:54:59 -0500

> already been ADs or IAB or ... from the list...

Actually, it's 11 new not including Stewart.  None of those 11 have been
ADs or IAB.
Granted, Pat Thaler is active in similar roles in the IEEE.   I can give
you the details,
if you'd like ;-)  http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/#rtg  but the point is
that this really really
matters.  We have to grow more people into leadership roles and recognize
that many
of them won't be interested in the AD role for a long time, if ever.  Every
time that a
WG chair is appointed, it's an opportunity for the area, not just the WG.

> There might be more challenges at times, but I think that will be good.

Heck, I'd be happy with more non-WG Chair shepherds whether in or out of
area.
Of course, I've been there too and if one is progressing just a few drafts,
frequently
the work to be the draft shepherd may look like less than the work to go
find, much
less teach, someone else to be a shepherd.

> I would love to have a(n ietf-wide) list of people willing to be a shepherd

A list would be useful.

> and Shephards by default. I.e. the RFC editor would put it it if it was

I'd like larger carrots for lots of things :-)   Partly, I think it is
about providing public
recognition and thanks - rather than needing a permanent tombstone.
In a culture that depends in part on reputation, public appreciation can be
useful.

Regards,
Alia

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 12:47:48 +0900

Alia Atlas <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > I'd like larger carrots for lots of things :-)   Partly, I think it
    > is about providing public
    > In a culture that depends in part on reputation, public appreciation
    > can be useful.

exactly... we need to have that in place to make being the document
shepherd role more attractive.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 2015 18:52:18 -0900

> shepherd role more attractive.

I guarantee you that if you were to develop a list for document
shepherds you'd be inundated with requests from people whose
performance evaluations are based on things like being
document shepherds in the IETF.  There are already incentives in
place, but not ones provided by the IETF and perhaps not ones that are
best for producing relevant, high-quality technical specifications.

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2015 09:21:25 -0500

> and the number of documents being advanced to IS (with a higher quality) went

If Proposed Standards weren't treated by the industry as being suitable 
for widespread deployment, I might agree with you.   But after all of 
these years, I don't think we're going to change that.

> contributes to the IETF "being too slow".  It means ADs are being excessively

I actually think the criteria in RFC 2026 are very good, and the problem 
is that in practice we often fail to even meet those criteria.   We 
often approve documents that have serious known technical omissions.

But I certainly agree that ADs are excessively loaded.     This is not 
an easy problem to solve.

Keith

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:16:17 -0800

>     "The AD job is a 50% commitment" (and the joke was: 50% of an 80 hour week)
...
>     "The AD job is supposed to be a 50% commitment, but has grown.

The difference in the approaches is useful and  encouraging.

However the problem is in the parenthetical joke, because it isn't
really a joke.  We really do tend to think of the AD job that way.

So the only thing that will make the AD job more accessible to staff
from smaller companies is to make it possible for the AD job to take
/substantially/ less time.

Think in terms of 25%, not 50%.

This requires viewing the AD job considerably more modestly than we do
now.  Ironically, it will probably make the AD job more useful.

ADs vary wildly in what they choose to do and how they choose to do it.
But too many ADs tend towards viewing their role as one of technical
leadership.[*]  That's what they've developed in the day job, and it's
what they are most comfortable doing.  The task of an AD is
fundamentally different.

The reality is that IETF work does not succeed or fail because of the
technical input from an AD. Nor does it succeed because of an AD's
"leadership".  That an AD occasionally catches some important error in a
draft is a distraction, not a justification.  IETF work is subject to
extensive reviews from many sources; the statistical import of
late-stage AD review is in the noise.  Again: For all the considerable
amount of time ADs spend on technical and procedural minutia
little-to-no real benefit is produced, other than the consumption of
time and the production of frustration.

The primary effect of much of the exceptional intervention by ADs is to
increase the perception of the IETF as having too many barriers to be
worth the effort.

More broadly, ADs need to stop believing that the fate of the Internet
rests on their shoulders.  For that matter, they need to stop believing
that the fate of the IETF rests on their shoulders.

IETF efforts succeed when there is a serious community need, significant
perception of the need by the community that includes a sense of timely
urgency, significant community participation, significant community
agreement on the goals, and a general willingness to compromise towards
the common goals. None of this has anything to do with ADs (or the IAB).

When performed well, the AD job is one of helping to make sure that
community ducks are lined up properly.  They facilitate the process of
organizing and operating an effort.  They don't "direct" the actual
work.  They don't initiate it and they don't manage the internal working
group process nor the technical content that is developed.

Defining the AD job to be fundamentally more modest and fundamentally
one of facilitation will simultaneously make the job accessible to a
much wider range of candidates and make the job more useful to the
community.

d/

[*] The variation in how ADs see the role of "leadership" is also a
problem.  Some believe they have to intervene constantly and at low
levels.  I've even been told that one AD once asked another what they
should raise as a DISCUSS, apparently on the premise that they felt
obligated to raise some sort of DISCUSS.  Such a compulsion is a
corruption of the AD's role.  More recently I watched quite a few ADs
press for adding editorial content to a (my) Independent Stream draft
RFC, going far beyond the explicit constraints of the IESG's agreement
with the RFC Editor.  Simply paying attention to the rules would
probably eliminate a noticeable amount of AD make-work.

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 09:38:24 -0800

Some comments from the vantage of my current position.

On 11/10/15 8:16 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> The nomcom used to ask the question: "The AD job is a 50% 
>> commitment" (and the joke was: 50% of an 80 hour week)
> ...
>> The nomcom now asks a different question: "The AD job is supposed 
>> to be a 50% commitment, but has grown.
> 
> 

It varies, but for me it's less than 2 hours a day plus roughly speaking
three 8-10 day  commitments associated with an IETF meeting and 4-6 days
for a retreat each year.

> This requires viewing the AD job considerably more modestly than we 
> do now.

From my vantage-point, IESG is a part time mid-career management
posting. it's hard to be effective in two years and you probably
shouldn't do it for more than 3 terms in a row so it's a 4-6 year
commitment.

> Ironically, it will probably make the AD job more useful.
> 
> ADs vary wildly in what they choose to do and how they choose to do 
> it. But too many ADs tend towards viewing their role as one of 
> technical leadership.[*]

It would be a challenge to be a key technical contributor in an area and
an AD at the same time. There is an important organizational component,
respecting fostering new work, managing the area, or coordinating
cross-area work. In operations  and management, netconf/yang related
network management has been a big cross-area topic for the last two
years and we have re-organized around supporting it.

> That's what they've developed in the day job, and it's what they are 
> most comfortable doing.  The task of an AD is fundamentally 
> different.
> 
> "leadership".  That an AD occasionally catches some important error
> in a draft is a distraction, not a justification.

While it is clear to me that perceptions of the role vary among iesg
members, Operations and Management leans heavily on the directorate we have
constructed for the purposes of review. From my vantage point we manage
the Last-Call/IESG review rather than being the nexus of it.

When I look at  drafts on the IESG agenda I want to know what happened
in IETF LC GENART/SECDIR/OPSDIR, what the working group thinks of the
IPR if any and how the document fits with respect to past or forthcoming
work, whether registry polices are reasonable or complied with. I'm not
so interested in technical merit or correctness from my own vantage
point since I am rarely the consumer for whom the document was intended.
I am certainly not an arbiter of taste.

> IETF work is subject to extensive reviews from many sources; the 
> statistical import of late-stage AD review is in the noise.  Again: 
> For all the considerable amount of time ADs spend on technical and 
> procedural minutia little-to-no real benefit is produced, other than 
> the consumption of time and the production of frustration.
> 
> The primary effect of much of the exceptional intervention by ADs is 
> to increase the perception of the IETF as having too many barriers to
> be worth the effort.
> 
> More broadly, ADs need to stop believing that the fate of the 
> Internet rests on their shoulders.  For that matter, they need to 
> stop believing that the fate of the IETF rests on their shoulders.

I don't view it that way. I hope others also do not. With respect to
the long term viability of the IETF as a place to do work, managing a
subset of the working groups, bofs, and participants in productive
efforts is far more important imho then late stage document review.

> IETF efforts succeed when there is a serious community need, 
> significant perception of the need by the community that includes a 
> sense of timely urgency, significant community participation, 
> significant community agreement on the goals, and a general 
> willingness to compromise towards the common goals. None of this has 
> anything to do with ADs (or the IAB).
> 
> community ducks are lined up properly.  They facilitate the process 
> of organizing and operating an effort.  They don't "direct" the 
> actual work.  They don't initiate it and they don't manage the 
> internal working group process nor the technical content that is 
> developed.

Agree.

> RFC, going far beyond the explicit constraints of the IESG's 
> agreement with the RFC Editor.  Simply paying attention to the rules 
> would probably eliminate a noticeable amount of AD make-work.
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 08:14:27 +1300

Dave,
On 11/11/2015 05:16, Dave Crocker wrote:

...
> draft is a distraction, not a justification.  

I think these three sentences between them are fundamentally misleading,
so let me break them down in details, and in reverse order:

> That an AD occasionally catches some important error in a
> draft is a distraction, not a justification.

It is rather beside the point whether an AD notices an error personally,
or whether one of his or her support team (reviewers, directorate, etc.)
does so. The point is that (a) an important error has been found and
(b) it is the AD who has the power to ensure it gets fixed.

Also, I think that "occasionally" is plain wrong. A lot of of quite serious
errors survive WG Last Call and are detected during the part of the process
that the AD supervises. I am not saying that all documents have such errors;
I estimate that ~20% have significant issues when they leave the WG.

>  Nor does it succeed because of an AD's "leadership".

The scare quotes are tendentious. The point isn't that the AD is in a
leadership position. It's that the AD has the power hold up the document
until it's fixed.

> technical input from an AD.

Correct, but completely beside the point. The point is that the ADs
have (barring an appeal) the power of decision, and they don't treat
this power as a rubber stamp.

...
> much wider range of candidates and make the job more useful to the

If you advocating removing the power of decision from the IESG,
please say so less cryptically, and explain how the serious errors
that are currently fixed after WGLC will be fixed in future.

    Brian

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 15:23:17 -0500

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 7, 2015, at 9:54 PM, Alia Atlas <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 9:34 PM, Michael Richardson <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
> Actually, it's 11 new not including Stewart.  None of those 11 have been ADs or IAB.
> Granted, Pat Thaler is active in similar roles in the IEEE.   I can give you the details,
> if you'd like ;-)  http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/#rtg  but the point is that this really really
> matters.  We have to grow more people into leadership roles and recognize that many
> of them won't be interested in the AD role for a long time, if ever.  Every time that a

I'm sure some of these involve new WGs, but it's also important to consider the role of an AD as a manager.  With that I mean coaching attempts should be made first to help chairs that are either new to the job or handling a tough WG.  Seeing chairs turn around a WG that is tough can be impressive and may be very helpful to the ongoing success of that WG.  The chairs will be more motivated and if helped in a way that works for them (management style) could lead to a more productive chair and WG.

Kathleen 

> Heck, I'd be happy with more non-WG Chair shepherds whether in or out of area.
> Of course, I've been there too and if one is progressing just a few drafts, frequently
> the work to be the draft shepherd may look like less than the work to go find, much
> I'd like larger carrots for lots of things :-)   Partly, I think it is about providing public
> In a culture that depends in part on reputation, public appreciation can be useful.
> 
> Regards,
> Alia
>  
>> --

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 15:55:33 -0500

--On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 15:23 -0500 Kathleen Moriarty
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> I'm sure some of these involve new WGs, but it's also
> important to consider the role of an AD as a manager.  With
> that I mean coaching attempts should be made first to help
> chairs that are either new to the job or handling a tough WG.
> Seeing chairs turn around a WG that is tough can be impressive
> and may be very helpful to the ongoing success of that WG.
> The chairs will be more motivated and if helped in a way that
> works for them (management style) could lead to a more
> productive chair and WG.

Kathleen, while I agree, I also see an opportunity for reducing,
rather than increasing, AD workload in that respect.   We've got
a lot of people around who have successfully led WGs before,
served on the IAB or IESG, etc.  In many cases, they can take
the role of coach and advisor to a new chair.  It may or may not
make any difference whether that coaching role is called
"coach", "mentor", "area advisor" (a term I'm sorry went out of
use or become synonymous with "responsible AD"), or co-chair as
long as those people understand that their role is helping,
advising, etc., rather than running the WGs.  The AD still needs
to manage things to the extent of being sure that things are
working and rearranging personnel when they are not (I think we
do too little of the latter), but doesn't need to be the
frontline coach.

    john

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 16:21:32 -0500

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 10, 2015, at 3:55 PM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 

I do appreciate your points and have done a mix of the above.  In a number of cases, the WGs I work with have experienced chairs that are excellent mentors, so there isn't much to do on that front.  In other cases, a few helpful calls to assist newer WG chairs has paid off in leaps and bounds.  And then there are other cases, where replacing is the best option.  I wouldn't dream of discussing any of the details on a public mailing list, but I've had all 3 occur.  My point was that I don't think you should automatically jump to replacing chairs if you can quickly get to the root of a problem and help the chairs, even behind the scenes.  We won't develop good future leaders if we just fire people and provide no coaching.  I don't think that was your intent, but maybe I wasn't clear that I see the usefulness in each of the options and being a good manager is knowing which is best when.  A couple of coaching points may save a lot more AD time than replacing chairs.  There should be balance and the ability to do what makes the most sense.  If we want to improve our culture, we should be looking at these types of options, otherwise who would want to chair WGs? (Rhetorical).

Best regards,
Kathleen

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 17:09:42 -0500

--On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 16:21 -0500 Kathleen Moriarty
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I do appreciate your points and have done a mix of the above.
> In a number of cases, the WGs I work with have experienced
> chairs that are excellent mentors, so there isn't much to do
> on that front.  In other cases, a few helpful calls to assist
> newer WG chairs has paid off in leaps and bounds.  And then
> there are other cases, where replacing is the best option.  I
> wouldn't dream of discussing any of the details on a public
> mailing list, but I've had all 3 occur.  My point was that I
> don't think you should automatically jump to replacing chairs
> if you can quickly get to the root of a problem and help the
> chairs, even behind the scenes.  We won't develop good future
> leaders if we just fire people and provide no coaching.  I
> don't think that was your intent, but maybe I wasn't clear
> that I see the usefulness in each of the options and being a
> good manager is knowing which is best when.  A couple of
> coaching points may save a lot more AD time than replacing
> chairs.  There should be balance and the ability to do what
> makes the most sense.  If we want to improve our culture, we
> should be looking at these types of options, otherwise who
> would want to chair WGs? (Rhetorical).

I think we are in violent agreement, at least on principles.  I
agree that firing (either of WG Chair(s) or of WGs) is a last
resort.  My "should do it more often" comment stands -- there
have been many cases in which someone has become completely
disfunctional, won't respond to coaching or more aggressive
tactics, but is retained far longer than is really sensible.
My main point was that pairing a first-time or not-quite-ready
Chair with some explicit assistance and coaching is useful,
something we don't do often enough, and need not be (and usually
should not be) the AD.  Part of the reason it shouldn't be the
AD is to reduce workload; the other part is that it is usually
better to have the AD in a position to evaluate Chair and WG
success without being intimately involved, especially if the AD
is also responsible for evaluating the quality of both the
technical work and the consensus that produced it.  I also
suggest that it is rarely a good idea to put one or two very
experienced people in charge of a WG, not because has a negative
effect on the work but because it throws away an opportunity for
leadership development.

  best,
    john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 06:45:56 -0800

Brian,

Were this a reading comprehension test, you'd get a failing grade.
You've misinterpreted or invented, rather than dealing with the plain
text as I wrote it.  It says what I meant.

> It is rather beside the point whether an AD notices an error personally,

Given the amount of time that ADs spend on reviewing specs themselves --
they are supposed to read them all -- no it's not.

> (b) it is the AD who has the power to ensure it gets fixed.

I didn't comment on IESG or AD authority.  If you want to introduce a
new issue, please decouple it from my note.

> I estimate that ~20% have significant issues when they leave the WG.

A lot of serious problems survive AD review.  That was my point:  We
publish flawed documents.  Lots of them.  With lots of flaws.

I didn't say that ADs don't catch any flaws; I said they don't catch
that many and they don't come close to catching them all.

Rather than treat the occasional, significant problem that is caught by
an AD as justification for all the effort ADs put into doing their
review, treat all the time spend /not/ catching errors as a strategic
mis-expenditure of a very scarce resource.

Cost/benefit: consider carefully.

> The scare quotes are tendentious. 

Use of the word tendentious was redundant (and inappropriate).  When
someone would publish a note offering criticisms and advocating for
specific actions the essence of the exercise is "bias".  Advocacy does
not reflect neutrality.

>The point isn't that the AD is in a

Calling it leadership does not make it leadership.  Calling it
leadership inflates the actual nature of the work and imparts a role
onto ADs that they don't have.  Again: the initiative and the work come
from the community, not ADs.

> Correct, but completely beside the point. 

Here's the nub of your comprehension failure:  It is /exactly/ the point.

ADs wind up trying to do lots of technical work as ADs, when that's not
the f'ing job.

> If you advocating removing the power of decision from the IESG,

Again: Please don't introduce issues that I neither raised nor intended.

Homework assignment:  Try re-reading my note, but this time, try to take
the words as they are written.

d/

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:39:46 +1300

Hi Dave,
> text as I wrote it.  It says what I meant.

We disagree profoundly about what your words mean. I don't think it would be
productive to continue mutual textual analysis.

I do want to say this: We have given the ADs power of decision over what
gets published. They take this power very seriously; that's intrinsic in
the way they are selected and appointed. It's the first thing you learn
as a new AD: the buck stops here. If we want to stop the ADs spending large
amounts of time on document quality, we have to take away their power of
decision over what gets published.

I don't advocate this, because I don't know how else to get rid of the
serious errors that survive WGLC.

   Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 11:54:16 -0800

On 11/11/2015 11:39 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> If we want to stop the ADs spending large

That statement is wrong.

I think I understand it, but it's wrong.

The reason it's wrong goes to the heart of how ADs misunderstand their
role in the context of a community collaboration in which they,
ultimately, have not initiated the work or created the work, and they
are not the critical actors in any eventual success or failure of the work.

The core word I used was "community".

The role of an AD is to facilitate (and reflect) the community.

So ADs need to stop viewing their roles as entailing the making of
/their/ decisions and instead view their role as /reflecting/ community
need and benefit.

Based on community information, not their personal preferences.

d/

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 17:21:39 -0300

Hi,

> On Nov 11, 2015, at 4:54 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

While I am not sure if it’s directly about the IESG's power of decision, it is another view on what would be necessary to the reduce the work load on Area Directors.  A lot of the work load of the ADs is reviewing documents.  I think an important element of reducing their work load is having working groups to advance higher quality documents to the IESG.

I think we need some way to measure the quality of advanced documents.  It would be interesting to look at the number of documents that get through the IESG without any discusses (assuming there are any). If not, some measure of how many discusses per document.  This would give us a rough measure of the quality of drafts arriving at the IESG.  Even better report this information back to each w.g. to give them a quality measure to track.  There may be better measures, like time in IESG review, but some sort of data would be helpful for working groups to improve their quality.  Feedback is good.

I think that if we want to reduce the load of Area Directors, getting to the point where working groups advance documents that doesn’t generate discusses is an element of reducing the work load on area directors.

Bob

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 15:22:27 -0500

Dave, as far as I can tell, your description does not match the roles 
and responsibilities assigned to area directors by the process.  You 
have in the past written I-Ds and suggested changes in those 
responsibilities to more closely match your vision.  The community has 
not adopted those documents.

Until and unless the community expresses a different view, I have to 
agree with Brian.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Kathleen Moriarty <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 16:11:13 -0500

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 11, 2015, at 3:21 PM, Bob Hinden <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 

RADext seems to be pretty consistent in terms of document quality and it being high.  They may serve as a good example.  The WG is not large, but editors and reviews are good.

The ACE use case draft went through with a low number of comments and could be another example.  It had a high number of YES ballots.

I'm sure there are lots of other examples other ADs could offer or you might see with some research.
> I think that if we want to reduce the load of Area Directors, getting to the point where working groups advance documents that doesn’t generate discusses is an element of reducing the work load on…

This would be very helpful.  I think most of us enjoy reading drafts when they are well written and well reviewed for technical problems.

Thanks,
Kathleen

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:22:10 +0900

> While I am not sure if it’s directly about the IESG's power of
> decision, it is another view on what would be necessary to the reduce
> the work load on Area Directors.  A lot of the work load of the ADs is
> reviewing documents.  I think an important element of reducing their
> work load is having working groups to advance higher quality documents
> to the IESG.

it is not clear to me that reducing the workload is a primary goal.
document quality is.  some basic management skills, delegation and load
sharing, seem to reduce workload without negatively affecting document
quality.

all serious workers (in the ietf) are overloaded; that's life.  ADs are
serious workers, we hope.  what i hear them whining about is incoming
document quality from the wgs.  if we are going to micro-manage the iesg
as an olympic sport, perhaps we should focus on that.

randy

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 01:39:15 -0500

--On Wednesday, November 11, 2015 16:11 -0500 Kathleen Moriarty
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> I think that if we want to reduce the load of Area Directors,
>> getting to the point where working groups advance documents
>> that doesn't generate discusses is an element of reducing
>> the work load on area directors.
> 
> This would be very helpful.  I think most of us enjoy reading
> drafts when they are well written and well reviewed for
> technical problems.

Two observations about this part of the discussion, leaving
other parts aside:

(1) The desire to have WGs produce good-quality drafts and its
corollary that only those WGs should exist that will produce
good-quality drafts is, at least in my observations, one of the
factors that has produced the very long and drawn out process
for getting WGs chartered. That process, in turn, produces some
of the sense of entitlement to get anything the WG agrees on and
recommends (even if by inattention) published.  That,  in turn,
appears to me to be one of the causes of the IESG getting
poor-quality documents, tuning them to eliminate the most
obviously problematic text, and then letting the results be
published.   Lots of us object to both the very long creation
times and to the IETF publishing poor quality standards track
specs, but we need to understand that there are tradeoffs among
undesirable options and cause and effect relationships involved.

(2) I question where "few DISCUSSes" is a good measure of
quality.  One way to get a draft through with few DISCUSSes is
to make it very long and about some very narrow and focused
topic, especially when it is a topic about which few people care
and they are all part of the development process.  The first
thing that happens, at least absent a very strong and
independent WG Chair (difficult because there are few volunteers
for the position in specialized WGs who aren't part of the core
group, aka "cabal"), is that anyone in the WG who is not part of
that core group tunes out.  The second step is that the IESG
gets a shepherd's report that says "good document, wide WG
consensus (after all, no one spoke against it), no issues".  A
few diligent ADs look through the document, find nits to pick
and go on record about them to prove that they are doing their
jobs, but the approach almost assures that there is little
substantive review of the document outside the group that
created it (whether it is actually high quality or not) and
hence few DISCUSSes, at least about anything critical to the
proposal or spec.   A variation on the same theme involves
documents developed outside the IETF by some relatively closed
and tight-knit group, deployed, and then brought to the IETF for
approval with great resistance to changes because there is
already deployed running code..  If the IESG allows such a
proposal to be turned into a WG (or some ADs is willing to allow
it to be pushed through as an individual submission), there is
no practical chance in today's environment of getting though
IETF LC and then saying "no" or "go back to first principles and
redesign the thing".  Whether we then see a significant number
of DISCUSS positions depends more or whether some ADs feel a
need to make a statement (even if about process rather than
document specifics) or just prefer that the spec slide through
and disappear from their radar.

     john

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 07:59:50 +0100

> decision over what gets published.

<voice=spock>This is not logical.</voice>

If an AD thinks it's his job to get a certain outcome (high quality
documents, for instance), and he can't use an effective means to achieve
the goal (blocking obviously bad documents), he'll either give up in
disgust (bad for him and the community) or try to reach the goal by
other means - which will likely take up more of his time.

In my opinion, the main job of the AD is to get others to do *their* job
- especially to make WG chairs do their job of making the WG produce
high quality drafts that reflect WG consensus and help make the Internet
better. (Yes, that's three wishes.)

---

From: "Bert Wijnen (IETF)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:20:08 +0100

hear hear.

Well said Harald

Bert

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:47:36 +0100

We – really the same people – seem to have had this argument perennially
for about a decade.  Before we continue, can someone spot what has
changed such that we are having it again?

Eliot

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 17:01:24 +0900

> changed such that we are having it again?

I think there clearly have been some gradual (or not) changes in incentives
for participation that have had an impact on the organization (not a good
one - we're organized under a different set of assumptions about how and
why people bring work in).  It's also the case that we're seeing increased
external pressures from both open source projects and from organizations
working further up the stack.

But hey, I'd be good with having the discussion even if the only thing that
has changed was frustration levels.  I'm actually not sure I fully
understand your question.  Are you suggesting that nothing's wrong, or are
you suggesting that we shouldn't talk about our problems unless something
has changed?

Melinda

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:40:43 +0100

On 11/12/15 9:01 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> Are you suggesting that nothing's wrong, or are you suggesting that we
> shouldn't talk about our problems unless something has changed?

I am suggesting that Einstein's rule about insanity applies.

Eliot

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 04:38:38 -0900

> I am suggesting that Einstein's rule about insanity applies.

On the other hand, the saying that you never fish the
same river twice may have some relevance.  Things
do change - the participants, the circumstances, the
workload, the frustration level, etc.  I think one thing
that's definitely changed is the amount of effort going into
chartering, and it's not clear to me that it's paid off.
I'd suggest that the proliferation of "problem statement"
working group documents suggests that it might not have,
although it might also be the case that if the problem
statement deliverables went away nobody would notice their
absence because the charters are so clear.  Dunno.

Melinda

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:15:22 -0800

> better. (Yes, that's three wishes.)

Last time this thread came up, I pointed out that delegation isn't a tool
used very effectively by the IESG.  If a WG goes through its entire charter
and draft development process, and the AD does not know the document
is in terrible shape until the end, then that's a problem.  Either the AD
should
be on top of every draft in every one of their WGs, or they should delegate
that responsibility to other people, and get help with the job. Waiting
until
the very end to fix problems is the least efficient approach, and the most
frustrating as well.

The idea of assistant area director was mentioned, but immediately
 dismissed.
I had 1 AD tell me offline that the only task he would be willing to
delegate
to an assistant was fetching coffee for him at the IETF.

Andy

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 11:25:13 -0500

> the very end to fix problems is the least efficient approach, and the most

Aren't the WG Chairs the ones who should be very familiar with the drafts in
their WGs and able to see problems?  In Routing, we also have the ability
for
a WG chair to request that the directorate do a "QA review" on a draft; the
target for that is right at or after WG adoption and then again at WGLC.  It
doesn't solve all problems, but the more we can solve early, the better.

One of the issues can be the cross-area considerations where an AD has a
bit more sensitivity to what is likely to be of concern and that can be
harder
to clarify.  Several other directorates do allow early reviews and I find
that
to be quite useful.

A serious problem with finding problems late in the process is that
frequently
most of what is possible is clarifications and word-smithing.  It's hard to
fix
fundamentals in something that is already implemented.

> to an assistant was fetching coffee for him at the IETF.

Everyone varies in how and what they could delegate.  Certainly, that isn't
my
opinion - but I'd also have to think deeply about what I could or should
delegate.

Regards,
Alia

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:03:30 -0800

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:25 AM, Alia Atlas <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]
>> > wrote:
>>

The WG chairs should be on top of every document, but apparently
that doesn't mean the AD will be happy with the result at the end.
The ADs only seem to have time to look at what is done, and not
at what is in the pipeline.  The tail-heavy process is self-perpetuating.

> most of what is possible is clarifications and word-smithing.  It's hard
> to fix

I think plenty of normative text gets changed late in the process.
That is better than publishing the draft with errors.  It's not
really a problem, since there should be no expectations of stability
for a work-in-progress.

> Everyone varies in how and what they could delegate.  Certainly, that
> isn't my
And that's why AD is a full-time job.
I don't know what you should delegate either.

Regards,

Andy

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 12:10:14 -0500

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Andy Bierman <[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Harald Alvestrand <
>>> [email-masked]> wrote:
>>>
>>> is in terrible shape until the end, then that's a problem.  Either the
>>> AD should

Absolutely.  It's a challenge - in part because of time and in part because
of
the amount of reading required.  On the other hand, I think it's also
something
that can be improved because once one starts reading the drafts early, it
helps
later on.  I'm still working on getting there though.

> really a problem, since there should be no expectations of stability

I'm not as convinced that there are substantial changes, as opposed to
tweaks,
later on.

> I don't know what you should delegate either.

I think that there are or can be things.  It requires thinking through the
work and the
trade-offs of not having as full a perspective.

Regards,
Alia

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 19:08:19 +0100

> chartering, and it's not clear to me that it's paid off.

That's a fair point.  I don't know how we get a clear answer.

> absence because the charters are so clear.  Dunno.

I haven't had experience with such things.  My concern was more aimed at
the meandering discussion about document quality versus AD work load.

Eliot

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Nov 2015 18:32:36 -0000

>That's a fair point.  I don't know how we get a clear answer.

Perhaps some stats on charter length vs. number of discusses on
documents or something like that.

My non-statistical opinion is that the charter is much less important
than WG chairs who understand the topic and WG members who can (and
are willing to) write well.

R's,
John

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 14:16:22 -0500

--On Thursday, November 12, 2015 11:25 -0500 Alia Atlas
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> Aren't the WG Chairs the ones who should be very familiar with
> the drafts in their WGs and able to see problems?  In Routing,
> we also have the ability for
> a WG chair to request that the directorate do a "QA review" on
> a draft; the target for that is right at or after WG adoption
> and then again at WGLC.  It doesn't solve all problems, but
> the more we can solve early, the better.

You addressed pert of this later in your note, but WG chairs,
especially of highly specialized WGs, may have a good grasp of
what is going on in their WG and even the relevant Area but that
is no guarantee of having any perspective on the implications of
the work to possible issues in other areas or vice versa.   My
impression (possibly wrong) is that, among all of our areas,
Routing is the last likely to be affected by work or constraints
in other Areas (with the possible exception of Security);
Security and ART are most likely to be affected.

>...
> A serious problem with finding problems late in the process is
> that frequently
> most of what is possible is clarifications and word-smithing.
> It's hard to fix

Unfortunately, one implication of that statement is that,
especially if the problems show in cross-area review at IETF
Last Call, the IETF ends up publishing standards track
specifications that contain known technical defects that are
rarely even adequately acknowledged.  The "we implemented this
from an I-D and therefore you are required to standardize it
with no significant changes" argument is one of the reasons the
IETF has developed in some quarters for producing work of, at
best, very uneven quality.  If the IETF's aspiration is very
high quality and we actually believe in it, then the IESG has to
be alert for signs of fundamental problems with a spec and both
able and willing to say "sorry, but that issue is fundamental
and the WG needs to go back to the drawing board and fix the
problem, even if it means a complete revision to the protocol
and invalidating any implementations".   I've seen a distinct
shortage of that willingness in recent years, no matter how many
hours people invest (and, by the way, people arguing strongly
that the IESG should defer to the relevant WG, no matter what
its issues).

>...
> Everyone varies in how and what they could delegate.
> Certainly, that isn't my
> opinion - but I'd also have to think deeply about what I could
> or should delegate.

I think this goes to the core of the "reduce AD workload" issue
and several 
related ones.  Some ADs will sincerely want to delegate but
won't be able to figure out what best to let go of.  Others will
feel able to delegate only coffee-fetching or equivalent.
Independent of AD preferences, the community has an at nominal
preference for accountability and having an AD say "don't blame
me, I delegated that to someone the Nomcom didn't seleet and
neither did any other community mechanism" would probably not go
over well.  

If the community wants to see significant changes in workload
and in several of the other topics that have come up on this and
related threads in recent weeks, we know of at least one way
--most likely the only way-- to accomplish that.  It involves
changing the role of the IESG, leaving the ADs with
responsibility for work-acceptance (including but not limited to
WG creation and decision to accept individual submissions for
processing) and WG and other process management issues, but
putting responsibility for final evaluation of Last Calls and
documents in the hands of another body, probably a newly-created
one.    That would tend to improve quality because the approval
body wouldn't have any of the conflicts of responsibility
associated with rejecting the work of a WG that they chartered
and managed.  And it would certainly reduce workload because ADs
and the IESG would be responsible for reviewing documents only
to the extent of determining that putting them into IETF Last
Call would not be a waste of community time.

Ideas along the lines of the above have been suggested several
times.  No IESG that was seated when the suggestions came up has
been willing to let the community consider them.  So, if people
think that adjusting the IESG role and/or workload are important
enough, I suggest that you tell it to the Nomcom and encourage
them to appoint no one to an AD position who is unwilling to
commit to giving ideas along those lines an open and fair
evaluation in the community.

    john

---

From: "MH Michael Hammer (5304)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 19:18:46 +0000

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of John Levine
> Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 1:33 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Looking for Area Directors Under Lampposts
> 
> Perhaps some stats on charter length vs. number of discusses on documents
> or something like that.
> 
> My non-statistical opinion is that the charter is much less important than WG
> chairs who understand the topic and WG members who can (and are willing
> to) write well.
> 

And  to stay on topic.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 19:44:45 +0000

John,

On 12/11/15 19:16, John C Klensin wrote:
> No IESG that was seated when the suggestions came up has
> been willing to let the community consider them. 

Can you point at something to back that up?

I'm not asking to try to catch you out btw, but first
I've no idea how the IESG could prevent the community
considering stuff, and second, whilst I've been on the
IESG I really don't think anyone who served would've
taken that stance. (An IESG might be able to stall
stuff, but not prevent consideration.)

As to the broader topic, the IESG has spent some time
on considering the whole AD workload thing and we did
not manage to reach consensus on anything that looked
like it'd really work out as a general solution. (Efforts
continue but more on a per-area basis at the moment.)

One conclusion I've reached as a result is that that
also reflects the lack of consensus in the broader
community as to what they want the IESG to do or not
do. Absent such a consensus, I doubt that we'll find
this discussion that productive, though I'd love to be
wrong there.

I also suspect that absent such a consensus the IESG
will inexorably end up more of a non-technical management
and bureaucratic body that slowly but surely takes on more
work and makes itself bigger. If that's true, then the
lack of community consensus to figure this out is also
a sort of decision, though not one many of us would like
(I hope).

Thanks,
S.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 16:31:10 -0500

> Can you point at something to back that up?

Keep in mind that a proposal for process change is dead in the
water unless someone on the IESG decides to take it up as an
individual submission or there is a discussion about starting a
WG (also effectively impossible, especially if a BOF is
required, without support from within the IESG.  Decisions to
initiate an IETF Last Call are also completely within the IESG"s
discretion -- I suppose one could appeal a decision to not
initial a Last Call, but that has, at least according to my
memory, never been attempted.

A quick search suggests that the last formal proposal along the
lines outlined in my earlier note was
draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00 somewhat over a decade ago.
There was some interest on the IETF list, but it rapidly became
clear that no one of the IESG was interested in considering it.
I note however that may process-improvement and
workload-reduction from that general period also died after it
became clear there was no IESG interest.  They include at least
two workload-bounding or productivity-enhancing proposals:
	draft-huston-ietf-pact
	draft-klensin-overload

several proposals to rework the way process change proposals are
handled (the only one I can find easily was a reductio ad
absurdum strawman in draft-klensin-process-planb but my
recollection was that I was motivated to write it after an
extended and heated discussion in plenaries and/or the IETF list.

The other bit of context that is relevant to this (and to my
assertion) was the collapse of the Newtrk WG work.  Different
people have different interpretations but my version is that the
WG managed to reach consensus on some fairly significant
documentation and standards track changes.  The IESG considered
those changes, decided they were unworkable and unacceptable,
and rejected them by refusing to initiate an IETF Last Call.
Since that time, I believe there has not been a single process
change proposal approved, or even subjected to IETF Last Call,
unless it was initiated from within the IESG (typically with one
or more AD authors).  Even the relatively modest proposal to
assign STD numbers at Proposed Standard time
(draft-klensin-std-numbers) could not get considered.

Would that have changed had any of these proposals been exciting
to create outrange on the IETF list or set off some sort of food
fight?  I don't know.  I suspect not, largely because of how
demoralized the parts of the community who believe that some
process evolution would be healthy because after the Newtrk
problem, but YMMD.

> considering stuff,

See above.  There is no point in spending time "considering"
anything, or even writing it up, if it appear clear that the
IESG would decline to issue a Last Call (at least in the absence
of rabble-rousing, coummunity outrage, and/or threats of
recalls).

> and second, whilst I've been on the

I can't remember how long you have been on the IESG but am quite
willing to believe that the current IESG would be more disposed
to encourage community debate and consensus development on a
proposal it disliked or that limited its authority than some of
its predecessors have been.  If anyone wants to try the
experiment, a few of the drafts cited above could be updated
with little trouble to make them contemporary.

> continue but more on a per-area basis at the moment.)

I think that summary could be equally well applied to (typically
informal) discussions that have occurred at irregular intervals
in the last 20 years.

> this discussion that productive, though I'd love to be

I actually agree with that, which is precisely the reason I've
tried (as have others) to get community discussion going on
goals and options.  However, I more or less gave up after
several of the documents cited above and some related
discussions.  Time for someone younger and who is trying less
hard to not care to take over.

> a sort of decision, though not one many of us would like

Although it saddens me, I agree with that as well.  If nothing
else, observations in other standards bodies --bodies whose path
the IETF seems to be charging down-- strongly suggest that
traditional organizational patterns apply: workload will expand
to fill available cycles and more, membership will shift toward
those who have the time (largely because of good support and
limited "day job" commitments or day jobs that are primarily
standards-oriented), that shift will accelerate the workload
increase, and technical expertise will be squeezed out because
good technical people are too valuable to be dedicated to that
sort of bureaucracy and management outside their own
organizations.  There will always be individual exceptions (at
least until the patterns grinds those people down and out) but,
as a general pattern... I've seen it too many times outside the
IETF and the "inside" patterns seem clear.

best,
    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 13:22:02 +1300

John,
On 13/11/2015 10:31, John C Klensin wrote:

...
> clear that no one of the IESG was interested in considering it.

Memory fades, but I think the reality was not an absence of any interest
(I was interested, for one). However, there was evidently no consensus
(however rough) in the IESG to consider it. It was certainly a topic at
IETF 63 (Paris) in the IESG meeting and in plenary, and it subsequently
came up on the poisson and pesci lists. But as General AD at the time,
I didn't get the sense that there was enough support in the community to
sponsor it. Maybe that was a misjudgement, of course.

(more below...)

> of rabble-rousing, coummunity outrage, and/or threats of

John is right. But in fairness to the 2005/2007 IESGs, it wasn't
that people denied there was a problem. It was an absence of rough
consensus around even the general type of solution. So the chance
of getting the newtrk documents through the IESG was extremely low.

If there's a lesson, it's that getting enough of the community involved
to override such a roadblock in the IESG is the key - and a WG like
newtrk, or the ad hoc pesci list that I set up, couldn't do that.

    Brian

---

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 21:52:00 -0500

I've been told by some current WG chairs that there's a tension between the
goal of being a neutral party (for consensus leadership) and the goal of
improving quality of the drafts.  If there are organizational messages that
discourage the chairs from using their technical acumen to ensure the
review is well targeted and far-reaching enough (as is needed especially
for problem drafts), this could account for some of the quality issues.

I'd like to see the WG chairs very technically empowered, while also
trusted to be fair when they manage consensus.  If they can't do both, it
may be hard especially hard to guide/lead/manage the WG when dealing with
drafts with quality problems.

Allison

---

From: Tim Wicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 03:46:57 -0800

As a fairly new WG Chair, I have always had the impression that 
submitting to the IESG a document that had not been through strong 
editorial review for quality and readability was unacceptable.  Perhaps 
my ADs have done a good job of setting expectations.

I do know that spending the time before a draft gets into the IESG/RFC 
cycle makes the whole process smoother.  Also, I would hope IESG members 
would talk to the chairs first privately on working on draft quality.

tim

On 11/12/15 6:52 PM, Allison Mankin wrote:
> I've been told by some current WG chairs that there's a tension between
> the goal of being a neutral party (for consensus leadership) and the
> goal of improving quality of the drafts.  If there are organizational
> messages that discourage the chairs from using their technical acumen to
> ensure the review is well targeted and far-reaching enough (as is needed
> especially for problem drafts), this could account for some of the
> quality issues.
>
> trusted to be fair when they manage consensus.  If they can't do both,
> it may be hard especially hard to guide/lead/manage the WG when dealing
> with drafts with quality problems.
>
> Allison
>
>
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:09:29 -0500

--On Friday, November 13, 2015 13:22 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> A quick search suggests that the last formal proposal along
>> the lines outlined in my earlier note was
>> There was some interest on the IETF list, but it rapidly
>> became clear that no one of the IESG was interested in
>> considering it.
> 
> Memory fades, but I think the reality was not an absence of
> any interest (I was interested, for one). However, there was
> evidently no consensus (however rough) in the IESG to consider
> it. It was certainly a topic at IETF 63 (Paris) in the IESG
> meeting and in plenary, and it subsequently came up on the
> poisson and pesci lists. But as General AD at the time, I
> didn't get the sense that there was enough support in the
> community to sponsor it. Maybe that was a misjudgement, of
> course.
>...

Brian,

This is ancient history and almost certainly not worth a long
debate.  I didn't bring up any of those details (much less
attempt to analyze them) until Stephen suggested that there
might not be a problem and asked for specifics.

However, in the hope of clarifying another part of this:

>> IESG would decline to issue a Last Call (at least in the
>> absence of rabble-rousing, coummunity outrage, and/or threats
>> of recalls).
> 
> John is right. But in fairness to the 2005/2007 IESGs, it
> wasn't that people denied there was a problem. It was an
> absence of rough consensus around even the general type of
> solution. So the chance of getting the newtrk documents
> through the IESG was extremely low.

Yes, but, at least judging from the number of comments and level
of controversy on the IETF list during Last Calls, we have Last
Calls on controversial issues on which there is an a priori
absence of rough consensus in the community at fairly regular
intervals.  In the non-technical area, the rather heated
discussions about consensus and anti-harassment documents, and
the earlier one about a two-level standards track, are perhaps
good examples.  What made newtrk special, as least as far as I
could tell as a mere document author, is that there was a WG
(unlike those three examples), there was a recommendation from
the WG, supported by its chair(s) to put the documents through
Last Call, the IESG had a discussion in advance of Last Call and
decided that the "chance of getting ... through the IESG was
extremely low", and therefore did not hold the Last Call or go
through any of our usual mechanisms for determining _community_
consensus.

Those other examples, or at least the two that have run to
conclusion and been published as BCPs, illustrate, not blocking,
but the other part of the problem as I see it.  All three
proposals emerged, not from community discussions or a WG but
from discussions within the IESG.  I-Ds were produced at least
some of whose authors (all of them on the -00 versions, if I
recall) were ADs.   While one could imagine tuning by the
community (and tuning did occur), it was clear from the
beginning that the IESG intended to push something of that
general nature through.  

So what we have is IESG-produced process proposals gong through,
even when the level of community support is a bit dubious, and
proposals from others getting, at best, no encouragement at all.
Maybe that is ok.  Maybe it is the best we can do.  But we
probably should not depend that it is an open process in which
ADs are just participating as members of the community.

    john

Independent of whether the IESG has blocked Last Calls

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 02:09:36 -0200

Long thread, and yes, some repetition from the past.

What follows in my personal view. This may or may not match with what
other people in the IESG or elsewhere think. Indeed, as noted, even
within the IESG there are differing views about the role of the IESG.
And that’s good.

I actually do think we have a slightly different situation today
than we have had ten or fifteen years ago. Most of that is
cultural, and also dependent on the people who are currently
active in the IETF and the team in the IESG. Maybe the external
world has had some effect as well. I’m sensing that “professional
standardiser” is a less frequent mode of operation in the companies
that we work for; for instance, people are increasingly expected to
combine that with open source development, and be more tightly
connected with business efforts. Which are good things from my
perspective.

Anyway, I think today the IESG has at least some examples of people
working real day jobs alongside of their AD responsibilities and has varying
levels of delegation and different arrangements. All that is good.

But really, the key issue is “how does the IETF work best and best
improve the Internet”? Not whether a particular person is the
one fixing particular  issues from the documents… or even the
workload…  the end result is what matters. And, here’s the
main thing: if you are in a leadership position you are asked to get
the job done, not to do it in a particular way. You could (try) to do it by
fixing everything coming your way, and writing yourself the specs that
didn’t get written by others but should have. Or you could try to make
the organisation itself work better. I personally believe the latter is
a better approach. Our formal rules do not prevent the different
modes of operation.

And Dave is right in that the quality of the work or the success of
IETF efforts does not _directly_ depend on the individual ADs. Yes,
final document review is a part of their job description, but it is
only a part. Their leadership role should not be seen as a direct line
into fixing particular issues in the output of the IETF. They should
indeed be the facilitators, but that involves many things — as Joel
noted, “there is an important organizational component, respecting
fostering new work, managing the area, or coordinating cross-area
work. “ And simply getting the right people in place as working group
chairs and in other roles is important, as John L noted.

I’m interested the direction of thought that started from Brian’s
observations of serious errors and Bob’s suggestion that we might
want to measure that. For those that do not know, Brian is a very
active Gen-ART reviewer, and those reviewers have one particular
vantage point to what the process produces. (But of course, as
with everything else, not everyone will agree to either a draft’s
content or its review; we only have subjective observations.)
An interesting statistic might be how many issues are brought
up in last call or by various directorate reviews. Or the number
of discusses. Or the number of last call/directorate issues vs.
discusses. My gut feeling is that the number of discusses is
smaller, but I’m not sure. Anybody up for writing some scripts
to do measurements of this?

I also wanted to high light some items from the discussion that I very
much agreed with. Thanks all:

> are willing to) write well.

Indeed. And people involved in general, be they editors, chairs, etc.

Tim Wicinski:

> As a fairly new WG Chair, I have always had the impression that submitting to the IESG a document that had not been through strong editorial review for quality and readability was unacceptable.  Perhaps my ADs have done a good job of setting expectations.

Yes.

> I am certainly not an arbiter of taste.

That is also my approach.

> efforts is far more important imho then late stage document review.

+1

> internal working group process nor the technical content that is

Right.

> as an olympic sport, perhaps we should focus on that.

I don’t want to put blame in any way to WGs, I’m sure the IESG could also
use more oversight and feedback by the community. And I actually
do think most WGs produce very good output, and in particular,
after community review in last calls and directorates we in my
impression suitable quality level for PS documents.

But the WGs are the primary place for IETF work to happen. It
follows that most significant improvements, issues, and successes
are there.

Joel Halpern:

> Dave, as far as I can tell, your description does not match the roles and responsibilities assigned to area directors by the process.  You have in the past written I-Ds and suggested changes in those responsibilities to more closely match your vision.  The community has not adopted those documents.

You are right, although I note that the ADs have a big role in facilitating the overall process but they of course also have a role in final document review. Although, as noted, the rules also leave a lot of room on how that is achieved.

> better. (Yes, that's three wishes.)

Right.

Jari

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 15:10:58 -0500

Maybe I missed it, but I do not recall seeing mention in this thread of a significant aspect 
of an ADs role – reviewing documents from outside there area – i.e., the 
cross-jurisdictional review step that the IESG review represents.

This is a major differentiator between the IETF and most other IT 
standards development organizations.   In most other organizations 
the only technical expertise applied to a proposal comes from within a 
working group (working party etc) – a group that will always have a 
limited scope of expertise

The IESG’s cross-area review ensures that proposals undergo 
review by experts in areas that will likely not be represented within 
a particular working group. 

Documents, no matter how clearly written, produced by an individual 
working group, no matter the level of subject matter expertise, can 
benefit from careful review by experts who have expertise outside the 
scope of the people participating in the working group.

When I was an AD (a rather long time ago now) I saw many documents 
where inadequate attention had been paid to security, congestion control, 
manageability, etc.

i.e., it is not sufficient to say, as has been said during this thread, that the 
onus should fall on a working group chair to ensure the quality of the 
documents that are produced by a working group, the best documents 
can be made better, in terms of being used on the Internet, by the 
cross-area review done by the IESG.  

Scott

---

From: "Stewart Bryant (stbryant)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 08:41:40 +0000

Scott,

You are absolutely correct.

An interesting question is whether we could design a distributed system that achieves the same effect at the same (or better) quality?

For example, could we achieve the same effect by convening a review panel for each ID consisting of one or two members of the directorate of every area?

-Stewart

Sent from my iPad

> On 15 Nov 2015, at 20:11, Scott O. Bradner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 09:03:10 -0500

> On Nov 16, 2015, at 3:41 AM 11/16/15, Stewart Bryant (stbryant) <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Scott,
> 

I agree, as well...

> For example, could we achieve the same effect by convening a review panel for each ID consisting of one or two members of the directorate of every area?

I think ADs could take this action independently, if they choose to and without any formalism, under the more general umbrella of delegating responsibility to the directorates...

- Ralph

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 15:19:44 +0100

Hi Ralph,

> I think ADs could take this action independently, if they choose to and without any formalism, under the more general umbrella of delegating responsibility to the directorates...

So long as accountability to the community remains intact.

Eliot

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 09:21:54 -0500

> On Nov 16, 2015, at 9:19 AM 11/16/15, Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ralph,
> 

Agreed - which, in my mind, argues in favor of ADs doing the delegation as part of their job, in which case they would retain responsibility for the outcome ... rather than a formal delegation process.

- Ralph

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 12:19:08 -0500

Scott,

Thanks.  

You have summarized the reasons why I get the creeps each time a
suggestion is made that we lower the expectations for
area-specific technical skill in the AD job, turn the AD role
into one of process management and checking, or give WGs final
authority over standardizing decisions (all of which, at least
on this dimension, amount to the same thing).  However, while
performing or ensuring cross-area review is the most important
aspect of the IETF's almost-unique approach, a strong and
technical AD review role also provides some protection against a
WG that becomes dominated by a narrow set of organizations or
interests and that therefore produces results that are favorable
to those interests rather than the Internet more broadly.
Standards bodies that do not have technical review beyond the WG
(or equivalent) that develops the proposal typically deal with
that issue by scrutinizing WG membership and insisting on
various statistical measures of balance.  No one has figured out
how to make that work (insofar as it works at all) without
organizational, rather than, individual membership and
participation, so the implications are fairly wide-ranging.

best,
   john

--On Sunday, November 15, 2015 15:10 -0500 "Scott O. Bradner"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Maybe I missed it, but I do not recall seeing mention in this
> thread of a significant aspect  of an ADs role – reviewing
> documents from outside there area – i.e., the 
> This is a major differentiator between the IETF and most other
> IT  standards development organizations.   In most other
> organizations  the only technical expertise applied to a
> proposal comes from within a  working group (working party
> etc) – a group that will always have a  limited scope of
> expertise
> 
> The IESG's cross-area review ensures that proposals undergo 
> review by experts in areas that will likely not be represented
> within  a particular working group. 
> 
> Documents, no matter how clearly written, produced by an
> individual  working group, no matter the level of subject
> matter expertise, can  benefit from careful review by experts
> who have expertise outside the  scope of the people
> participating in the working group.
> 
> When I was an AD (a rather long time ago now) I saw many
> documents  where inadequate attention had been paid to
> security, congestion control,  manageability, etc.
> 
> i.e., it is not sufficient to say, as has been said during
> this thread, that the  onus should fall on a working group
> chair to ensure the quality of the  documents that are
> produced by a working group, the best documents  can be made
> better, in terms of being used on the Internet, by the

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 04:04:58 -0500

Lloyd,

For those of us who still read email in plain text form for
security and other reasons, your message was very nearly
unreadable, as you can probably deduced from the quoted parts
below (missing blank lines were missing in the original).

--On Tuesday, November 17, 2015 08:04 +0000 Lloyd Wood
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>  blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important;
> border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important;  padding-left:1ex
> !important; background-color:white !important; } "a strong and
> technical AD review role also provides some protection against
> a WG that becomes dominated by a narrow set of organizations or
> interests and that therefore produces results that are
> favorable to those interests rather than the Internet more
> broadly." *cough* DTN WG *cough*
> when draft authors presenting at an IETF meeting speak only of
> CCSDS books, it's clear what interests and results are being
> favoured.

Why do you think that follows?  Do you believe that people
should not be permitted to write or post documents because they
have too-narrow perspectives or perspectives you disagree with?
Do you think we should have a rule against citing some
particular organization or standards body?

If you think DTN is being mismanaged, have you discussed the
issues with the WG Chairs and relevant ADs?   If you have not
gotten satisfaction, have you made requests that can be appealed
and exercised that option, copying the IETF list on the
substantive contents of that appeal?

And, even if that one effort were a problem, do you have some
basis for assuming that the problem generalizes?

There is a separate issue about "presentations" at IETF
meetings, but I hope we can avoid repeating that thread.
 
> how long ago were the expectations for the AD role lowered?

Whether one likes the version of any particular year or not, I
think the AD role, and expectations of it, have been continually
changing (I won't go so far as to say "evolving") since the
reorganization of the early 1990s and probably earlier.

best,
    john

> Lloyd Woodhttp://sat-net.com/dtn

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:20:29 +0000 (UTC)

blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important;  padding-left:1ex !important; background-color:white !important; }  John,

if you listen to the recording of the Yokohama DTN meet, you will hear discussion of edits to CCSDS docs, rather than to the ietf drafts you might expect. At best, it's a revealing Freudian slip.

If you look through the archives of this ietf mailing list, you will find my objections to the formation of the dtn wg, and my predictions that it would be a vehicle for CCSDS, rather than favouring the Internet.

I find it interesting that popular mail programs now lack any options for configuring text formatting. There isn't an app for that.

Lloyd Wood 

On Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 20:05, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:

Lloyd,

 

best,
    john

---

From: tom p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 11:42:22 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
To: "IETF discussion list" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 8:10 PM

Maybe I missed it, but I do not recall seeing mention in this thread of
a significant aspect
of an ADs role – reviewing documents from outside there area – i.e., the
cross-jurisdictional review step that the IESG review represents.

When I was an AD (a rather long time ago now) I saw many documents
where inadequate attention had been paid to security, congestion
control,
manageability, etc.

<tp>
Scott,

I find it significant that security comes first on your list, congestion
control second.  I see security and transport (UDP usually) as the two
arcane topics that are the commonest source of infelicities, even to the
extent of ADs creating DISCUSS which, at times, appear to me to be based
on misunderstandings.  I think that the Security Area, in particular,
should be more proactive in making it clear what other areas should be
doing, by way of Security Considerations, choice of options and so on.

A minor example of what I have in mind is seeing an I-D in WGLC
recommending the use of an RC4 cipher suite, something that was
'prohibited' last February (RFC7465). You could argue that this is
cross-area review in action, since I track both lists and noticed the
discrepancy.  But there is also a Standards Track protocol from some
time back which still recommends its use, something which someone else
had already picked up on and is likely to fix.  It was good of the
Security Area to make it known that RC4 is now seen as having
unacceptable weaknesses but it would have been better if they had gone
the extra mile to see who was or had recommended it, perhaps using
RFC7465 to make the necessary update.  I think that the bases are now,
or will be, covered but they could have been done so more efficiently,
at less cost to the time of those whose time makes the IETF possible.

Tom Petch

i.e., it is not sufficient to say, as has been said during this thread,
that the

Scott

---

From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 07:18:52 -0500

inline

> On Nov 17, 2015, at 6:42 AM, tom p. <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

having clear security direction to working groups and having security expertise 
that working groups can call on when they need it has been a desire since I
first got on the IESG (1993) - I would love it to be different but, at this time,
having a backstop is about as good as the IETF has been able to do

Scott

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 08:04:19 +0000 (UTC)

blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important;  padding-left:1ex !important; background-color:white !important; } "a strong and
technical AD review role also provides some protection against a
WG that becomes dominated by a narrow set of organizations or
interests and that therefore produces results that are favorable
to those interests rather than the Internet more broadly."
*cough* DTN WG *cough*
when draft authors presenting at an IETF meeting speak only of CCSDS books, it's clear what interests and results are being favoured.

On Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 04:20, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:

Scott,

Thanks.  

best,
  john