Re: [DNSOP] meta issue: WG to discuss DNS innovation (was Re: draft-hzhwm-start-tls-for-dns-00)

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 17, 2014, at 1:44 PM, David Conrad <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Perhaps this is the problem that should be solved?

I don't know how practical that is.   Brian and I have talked about doing one-off meetings when we want to discuss DNS extensions at IETF meetings, since we have the dnsext mailing list for email discussions.   But that leads to AD-sponsored documents, which probably isn't the right thing to do on a large scale.

>> Possibly rotating working group chairs more frequently would work in such cases.
> 
> This seems to imply the working group chairs have a larger role than I suspect is healthy (either for the WG chairs or the IETF as a whole).


Working group chairs are responsible for determining working group consensus.   It's really important (IMHO) for working group chairs to take action when mailing list discussions start to tube on non-consensus-affecting tangents.   I've seen numerous working groups fail when chairs don't do this.

So I really don't know what you mean by "larger role than is healthy."  Chairs are not secretaries.   They have real work to do, and a real leadership role.   They do not decide what the output of the working group should be—they determine consensus based on working group discussions.   But this is a difficult task to do well, and I think it's a pretty large role.