Re: [hrpc] draft-irtf-hrpc-political - current determination regarding RG last call.

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

I concur partially with Eliot: i don't think this is about sides. I
actually suspect that Niels and I agree to a fair extent about the
political nature of standards development. My concern is not that but
rather whether this document makes interesting/useful claims and whether it
supports them with evidence. At present, it's not clear to me that it does
so, or really even what point it is trying to make.


On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 12:13 AM Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Avri,
>
> First, I appreciate the level of effort that Niels is putting into this
> work.  I want to take issue with two points you made:
>
> On 14 Oct 2019, at 16:44, [e-mail] wrote:
>
> I think the document does a decent job of expressing one side of the
> argument, though there are places in that discussion that are shy on
> references and on arguments that logically show why that view should be
> considered the right argument.
>
>
> To me this was never about “sides”.  To begin with there may be a great
> many sides.
>
> Regardless, once there is a clear and bounded research question,
> reasonable argumentation and references, and a bounded conclusion,
> regardless of whether I agree with the work, I am comfortable with it being
> published.  Some might want to publish opposing argument.  So long as we as
> a group are open to those publications as well, why would it be necessary
> to hold up this work?
>
> Having written an economic and policy paper with people who had opposite
> views[1]*, I don’t recommend the practice.  One gets into all sorts of
> arguments about methodology and reference quality etc with one’s
> co-authors, and for what?  What is the value of such a work over two
> separate works?
>
> Which brings me to my next point:
>
>
> Regarding the discussion of whether we need RG consensus to publish in
> the IRSG stream: as I have said several times, I believe that in
> becoming a RG draft, a private draft becomes subjected to the RG rough
> consensus process.
>
>
> Yes, you have said this.  I do not recall you saying why you would take
> this approach.  Can we please have a discussion as to whether this is the
> best way forward?  What is the value of rough consensus in this case?  Or
> perhaps I should ask that question differently: on what do you seek rough
> consensus: the positions in the document or whether it is simply in good
> enough form to be sent up to the IRSG?  The latter is a whole lot easier to
> get to.
>

Well, "good enough to send to the IRSG" needs to be judged against some
standard. In any case, having the document be an RFC under the IRTF stream
involves a certain amount of endorsement and so I would want there to be
some level of consensus that the we had confidence in the statements in the
document (just as I would want if I were to be on the PC of a conference
which was considering this as a submission).

-Ekr