Subject: Re: [Icar] independence of reviews; variability

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 23:16:14 -0800

Mark,

MA> One would really hope that swaying an area director would be roughly the
MA> same as swaying the community.  ...

MA> Of course, I am sure that maybe some ADs have hot-button issues that do
MA> not enjoy IETF consensus.

Since you are asking me a direct question:

Having independent reviews is in line with a community, collaborative
process. It makes the primary force of decision-making come from an
aggregation of comments, and an aggregation of reactions, rather than
from any one person's views or preferences (or even one particular
group's.)

Yes, that might be relevant to the peculiarities of one AD or another,
but it is equally relevant to anyone else's peculiarities.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>

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From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:28:49 -0500

> my mantra these days is "review early, review often". (However, doing
> the former will reduce the need for the latter.)

I completely agree.

> The idea for reviews needs to be that they are for the purpose of
> improving working group technical quality, rather than for swaying an
> area director.

Got it.

One would really hope that swaying an area director would be roughly the
same as swaying the community.  In other words, that the ADs are
reflecting community consensus when they lodge big complaints.  E.g., a
transport AD saying "nope, this doesn't have congestion control, try
again" is not the opinion of that AD.  That is a broad opinion of the
IETF, I believe (for most protocols).  Therefore, a reviewer saying
"there is no CC and that is not going to fly" is relly just a reflection
of community consensus that will, if unchanged, will manifest itself in
the IESG review.

Of course, I am sure that maybe some ADs have hot-button issues that do
not enjoy IETF consensus.  Is it a goal of some review mechanism to beat
such opinions out of the process?  It'd be nice to try to minimize these
things, I think.  But, I am not sure a review process is the way to do
it.  (Or, am I using different words to say the same thing you're trying
to say?)

Thanks!

allman

--
Mark Allman -- ICIR -- http://www.icir.org/mallman/