Re: Late review management (Re: [Icar] independence of reviews; variability)

[David Meyer <[e-mail]>]

	Margaret,

>> >Once again, diversity of perspectives is our friend... that is, if we
>> >believe in community rough consensus, rather than hierarchical assertion
>> >of authority.
>> 
>> This touches on a thought I've had off-and-on for the past couple of 
>> years...
>> 
>> The current IETF structures, policies and processes are based on some 
>> fundamental assumptions two of which are (1) that making decisions by 
>> rough consensus, reached through an open process will achieve good 
>> results, and (2) we can select leaders (ADs, WG chairs, etc.) and 
>> trust them to fairly solicit, judge and act upon rough community 
>> consensus.  Sometimes, though, we seem to question those assumption, 
>> and we end up adding structures, policies or processes that are 
>> intended to protect us from the results of our own consensus-driven 
>> decisions.  I think that is (and has been) a mistake.

	I couldn't really parse the last sentence in this
	paragraph, i.e., what do you think is the mistake,
	questioning the assumptions or adding structures,
	policies, or processes? 
	
	That being said, honestly questioning one's assumptions
	with an eye toward improvement is never wrong. However,
	the latter (adding structure, etc) clearly can. So maybe
	its not really so much about the questioning (that much
	is healthy for our or any organization); maybe it is more
	about what we do in few those cases (if any) that we
	might find in which our common assumptions don't hold. In
	the case of the IETF, it is pretty clear that there are
	at most a few cases in which our consensus based approach
	is less efficient than we might like; it clearly works
	well in the vast majority of cases (nuff said on that
	one; the record speaks for itself).    

>> While there is no decision making process (hierarchical, democratic, 
>> I just get to decide...) that achieves good results all of the time, 
>> the consensus-driven process has worked well for the IETF over the 
>> years.  By failing to trust it, we don't actually move to another 
>> effective decision making process, we just break the one that we have.

	Maybe there is be something more (less?) granular here,
	like trusting the "Rough consensus and running code"
	isn't a binary thing? That is, it works extremely well
	for us most of the time, however, we do need to be
	vigilant and watch out for those few instances in which
	it doesn't. So maybe it is less about trust, and possibly
	more about trying to make sure those processes that have
	been so successful for us continue to serve us well. That
	goal would seem (minimally) to require continual
	reevaluation as we, our technology, and our industry
	evolve. At least that is how I see this issue.      
	
>> I think that this same line of thinking applies to review...  We 
>> should put into place the mechanisms, tools, training, etc. to 
>> improve the community's capacity to provide quality review.  Perhaps 
>> we should provide mechanisms that help WGs' find and recruit 
>> reviewers.  We could even develop some guidelines about what type and 
>> quantity of review makes sense at each level.  But, ultimately, I 
>> think that we should trust that our WGs (and our WG chairs, document 
>> editors, etc.) actually _want_ to  produce good quality, 
>> well-reviewed work.  We can improve their ability to do that by 
>> giving them better tools, but we won't achieve anything by trying to 
>> enforce quality through "better" rules.

	Completely agree. 

>> If we decide, as a community, that we can no longer trust the 
>> consensus process and/or the motivations of our ADs, WG chairs or 
>> document editors, we have a _much_ bigger problem than can be solved 
>> by changing our review processes.

	Again, completely agree.

	Dave

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