Re: [Gendispatch] WG Review: General Area Dispatch (gendispatch)

> On Oct 11, 2019, at 4:07 AM, Alissa Cooper <alissa@cooperw.in> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ben,
> 
>> On Oct 10, 2019, at 5:52 PM, Ben Campbell <ben@nostrum.com <mailto:ben@nostrum.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Oct 10, 2019, at 12:21 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com <mailto:john-ietf@jck.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --On Tuesday, October 8, 2019 21:18 +0200 Barry Leiba
>>> <barryleiba@computer.org <mailto:barryleiba@computer.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> ...
>>>>> Another difference is that while DISPATCH is mainly
>>>>> interesting to people in the ART Area, we can expect
>>>>> GENDISPATCH to draw from all areas. We try not to let
>>>>> DISPATCH conflict with other ART meetings. How do you
>>>>> deconflict GENDISPATCH without it turning into another plenary
>>>>> or a standing BoF?
>>>> 
>>>> This is always an issue with Gen Area BoFs and WGs, and this
>>>> will be no different.  I think the bottom line is that
>>>> there'll be a set of people who will want to participate
>>>> regularly, and we'll try to accommodate that... there'll be
>>>> people who want to parachute in for certain topics, and we'll
>>>> do what we can to accommodate that, realizing that it's
>>>> harder... and there'll be a lot of people who won't want to
>>>> have anything to do with it until a proposal is at a stage
>>>> where they strongly support it or object to it, and there's
>>>> little we can do to accommodate that.  It is what it is, but
>>>> it's no different than if we just charter Gen Area WGs without
>>>> a DISPATCH-like start.  No?
>>> 
>>> Barry,
>>> 
>>> I see one risk with this that I think should be considered and
>>> watched for even if the IESG decides to move forward.
>>> 
>>> The IETF has a rather long and difficult history, with only a
>>> few exceptions since the POISED and POISSON WGs, of there being
>>> two types of process change proposals.  One type is
>>> enthusiastically welcomed by the IESG.  A large fraction  of
>>> proposals of that type originated within the IESG (or
>>> occasionally the IAB) and were pushed at the community rather
>>> than being in any sense bottom-up.  That is not necessarily bad
>>> -- your work (and Thomas's and Harald's) on IANA Considerations
>>> is, IMO, one of the more positive examples.   Others are not.
>>> They, and especially ones that members of the IESG see as a
>>> threat to their authority or the way they do things and
>>> sometimes as adding work, have tended to vanish.  Often they
>>> vanish without a trace, with no opportunity for the community to
>>> take positions on Last Call, sometimes inconsistent with WG
>>> consensus, and usually with very little accountability for
>>> individual ADs or the IESG in general.  I (and some others)
>>> routinely cite NEWTRK as an example but there are others.  In
>>> many of them, the IESG has insisted that a working group is
>>> needed and then refused to create such a working group (or has
>>> created one with a charter so narrow or broad as to make
>>> progress impossible) as a means of killing the effort.  In
>>> others, ADs have managed to erect sufficient obstacles and
>>> induce enough delays that people simply lose interest.
>>> Sometimes that is A Good Thing; often it is a control mechanism
>>> that keep particular people or points of view in power and
>>> prevent the IETF from evolving and making progress.
>>> 
>>> So, the question about this proposed WG for me is whether it
>>> will make those tendencies better and thereby prevent good ideas
>>> from getting lost or suppressed.   If so, I think it is a great
>>> idea.   But I also see the risk of its being used to bury work
>>> that it out of favor with "the leadership" and doing so in a way
>>> that preserves the status quo except when the IESG wishes things
>>> to be different) and enables even less transparency and
>>> accountability than we have seen in the past.  I'd like to see
>>> ideas and controls about how to prevent the latter or how to
>>> detect it and push back if it starts to occur, and I don't see
>>> those in the current draft specification.
>> 
>> Hi John,
>> 
>> This brings up another question in my mind. The ART ADs typically treat DISPATCH decisions as non-binding recommendations. Likewise, the ADs may skip DISPATCH and take proposals straight to BoF or even WG formation if they think it appropriate.
>> 
>> Would GENDISPATCH decisions be treated the same, or would they be binding on the IESG? I had assumed the former, in the sense that AD discretion applies to pretty much any working group. Whichever case is the answer, I think the charter needs to be explicit about it.
> 
> I changed the sentence about RFC 3710 so it now includes the word “discretion.” https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-gendispatch/ <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-gendispatch/>
Hi Alissa,

That helps. Also, the text about Gen AD discretion that was already there that I somehow completely failed to read also helps :-)

Ben.

> 
> Best,
> Alissa
> 
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Ben.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Gendispatch mailing list
>> Gendispatch@ietf.org <mailto:Gendispatch@ietf.org>
>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/gendispatch>