[Gendispatch] Re: [procon] dispatching draft-carpenter-rfc7221bis

[Adrian Farrel <[e-mail]>]

I'm really struggling to understand why their is a disconnect. 

 

The working group has consensus to do something (adopt a draft) says nothing about whether the working group has consensus about something else (the content of the document). That's why we have adoption polls and working group last calls.

 

Perhaps it is this disconnect that causes adoption polls to get wtapped around the axle of "but this docuent is not perfect".

 

A

On 25/03/2025 12:01 GMT Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:

 

 

On 25. Mar 2025, at 11:23, Michael Richardson <[e-mail]> wrote:

 

Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:

>> substantive changes to the document […] need to represent working group rough consensus.

 

I hope this never gets IETF consensus.

The whole point of a WG draft is to have documents that can be used to

*test* WG consensus. If they already have to reflect WG consensus, do

you do a WG last call before publishing each revision? On *what*?

1) you need WG consensus to adopt a document

Yes, but very explicitly at the time a document is adopted it itself is not a consensus document!

 

2) you need WG consensus to substantially change a document

Well, no.

The authors are supposed to change the document in a way that

(a) makes sense (technical quality!)

(b) is conducive to achieving consensus eventually.

 

Often, document authors have spent a bit longer with thinking about its content, so they can manage (a) and (b) in a more productive way than just layering bureaucracy (i.e., committee IQ).

 

If the WG says no (judged by the authors or ultimately the chairs!), the authors can always revert.

 

Noting that WG chairs judge these two things.

The evolution of a document is managed by its authors.

If the chairs don’t like how things go, they can install a new author team.

But the chairs are not the authors!

 

(Obviously, there are WGs that operate based on pull requests, but one or two approvals of a PR before it is merged do not consensus make.)

 

But, you are ironically, applying document-must-be-perfect-before-adoption to

this document :-)

Not at all, I just says I hope this passage never achieves consensus (which was a statement about the future!).

 

None of that section is new. Maybe you dislike the wording, but the question

is: do you agree that there is a problem?

As so often, there may be a problem, but that would not be with the process, but with the lack of *applying* the process (including the choice of the author team).

 

I generally knee-jerk when someone argues for replacing a process when the real problem is that the process isn’t even used (or known!) in the first place.

 

(Of course, a process can be unworkable, but I’d like to know why.

The put-as-many-roadblocks-in-the-way-of-progress-as-possible process *is* unworkable, and it is easy to explain why [I could point to a recent example].)

 

Grüße, Carsten

 

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