Why do we have working group charters (was: To "lose the argument in the WG")

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Ted, John,

[I changed the subject line]

At 07:10 PM 2/18/2017, Ted Lemon wrote:
>Joel Halpern pointed out privately that I somewhat misrepresented 
>the process here.   The IETF review process for working group 
>charters does not require that there be IETF consensus to approve 
>the charter.    This is true, butdoesn't actually refute my claim 
>that it is a process failure if the IESG approves a charter and then 
>allows a working group to do work that exceeds the bounds of the 
>charter.   That _is_ a process failure, in the simple literal sense 
>that the process did not produce the right outcome: the IETF 
>community was not given an opportunity to review the charter that 
>would have included the work that was done.   If we think that's 
>okay, why do we have working group charters at all?

A Working Group charter is approved by the IESG and the IAB [1].  The 
working group charter would be a theoretical exercise if the charter 
which was published diverges significantly from what was actually 
done.  I agree that it is a process failure.

>The way the process _should_ have gone in this case is that when the 
>IESG noticed that new work needed to be done by a particular working 
>group, they updated the charter to reflect that, and got IETF review 
>of the updated charter.   In this case, you are right that if the 
>IETF community was clearly opposed to the new work, the IESG could 
>still approve the charter.   But this would be extraordinary.

It does not seem that difficult to ask for a recharter.  The relevant 
AD(s) could bring the matter to the attention of the IESG instead of 
having to ignore or to deal with a process failure.

>And this is why the IETF community shouldn't treat charter updates 
>as pro forma.   Charter review is an important part of the feedback 
>mechanism that keeps the IETF a consensus-driven 
>organization.   Doing out-of-charter work, or lawyering the charter 
>to say that work that really isn't part of the intent of the charter 
>nevertheless conforms to the letter of the charter, bypasses this 
>important step.

Describing the process issue as "lawyering" conveys the idea that it 
is unreasonable to complain about such issues.  I agree with what you 
wrote about the feedback mechanism.

At 07:56 PM 2/18/2017, John C Klensin wrote:
>There are a number of dimensions of the problem.  One could
>debate their ranking by importance, but I'm not sure the
>exercise would be productive.  I would encourage you to find the

Agreed.

>Yes, as long as you remember that they are supposed to be
>representing the will of the community and accountable to it.
>Neither WG Chairs nor ADs have any other source of authority.
>The difficulty with your statement above is that it can be read
>to imply that there are no constraints one, or appeals from, the
>decisions.  That is not true or, more specifically, if one wants
>a healthy IETF that produces credible work, it better not be.

It is possible to appeal the decision of the WG Chair, and if that 
fails, to file an appeal with the Responsible AD.  There is still an 
option to file an appeal if the issue is noticed later in the process.

There are constraints.  At the WG level, the WG Chair is accountable 
to the Area Director.  A competent Area Director would probably ask 
for an explanation if the document exceeds the scope of the WG 
Charter.  I don't know the details of the case [2] to form an opinion 
about the matter.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. The wording which I used is imprecise.
2. https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg101489.html