Re: [Idna-update] [I18nrp] FWD: Re: [I18n-discuss] draft-faltstrom-unicode11, i18n "directorate", and related issues

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,
At 02:02 PM 05-12-2018, John C Klensin wrote:
>To a considerable extent, it is a cross between a working group,
>a directorate, and a review team.   See my recent long note.

Ok.

>But this is where we go into either a rathole or a procedural
>swamp that wastes time and frustrates some of the relevant
>experts into deciding to spend their time in other ways.
>Certainly, if they wanted to, the ART ADs could propose setting
>up three (in the extreme case) separate groups, a directorate to
>advise them on i18n strategy, a review team to evaluate both
>in-area and out-of-area (but primarily out-of-area) documents
>with i18n topics or impacts, and a WG to generate new i18n work
>and process documents.  They could then consider the fairly
>small number of experts available (both by knowledge and ability
>and willingness to commit) to populate such groups and do i18n
>work and respond by (at least mostly) appointing the same people
>to the first two groups and encourage them to join/participate
>in the third.   If only because of a shortage of volunteers,
>they might even appoint the same chairs/coordinators for all
>three.  Then they could figure out a way to make it clear which
>hat people were wearing when they said something and be prepared
>for complaints (or even appeals) when it wasn't sufficiently
>clear.
>
>Seems to me like a huge opportunity to waste time, spend energy
>on procedures that would be better spent on substantive work,
>and drive experts away from participation and the IETF and that
>it would have absolutely no advantages other than impressive
>ritual correctness.   YMMD.

It is likely that there are non-technical considerations at play in 
all in "internationalization".  It is not worth the effort to attempt 
to explain that to the IESG.  The non-trivial part of this effort is 
to create the conditions for it to be sustainable.  All it takes is 
one issue to cause an unwillingness to commit.

>Of course not.  Nor can a review team review or, by itself, a WG
>decision to not proceed with a draft.   An AD could take input
>from any of them and use it to block a draft or could proceed
>anyway (in the WG case by changing WG leadership, spinning up a
>separate WG, or handle the draft as an individual submission).
>Do you see enough difference there to justify quibbling over
>what this is called or creating new and elaborate procedures?  I
>don't but, again, YMMD.

Instead of looking at this in terms of working group versus 
directorate, I would ask about the objective(s) being sought and then 
try to fit them into existing processes.  There would probably have 
to be some informal talks along the way to encourage universal acceptance.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy