Re: To "lose the argument in the WG"

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, February 18, 2017 01:33 -0800 S Moonesamy
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> At 09:05 AM 2/14/2017, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> To Ted's point, indulging folk who 'did not have time' to 
>> participate earlier is frankly abusive of all those who did.
> 
> It is a matter of how the comment is framed.  For example, a
> comment along the lines of "I don't know whether the WG
> considered this issue" is not a problem as it should be
> possible to point to the resolution (re. issue tracker,
> decision posted to the WG mailing list, etc.)

It can be something else as well.  We could be more careful
about our vocabulary (but probably won't be), but consider a
scenario in which someone, even someone who is quite expert in a
given topic, looks at a WG charter and likely leadership and
participants and says to herself "This is unlikely to produce
anything harmful or go off into the weeds or is sufficiently
narrowly scoped to not pose a general problem.  I do not have
unlimited time to spend on IETF work, and my knowledge and
skills are needed elsewhere".  That is an "I don't have time"
scenario, but it is a vote of confidence in those actively
participating in the WG (and the WG Chair and AD involved) not
abusive of them.  If it then turns out that the WG, in her
opinion, does go off into the weeds, produces someone harmful to
the Internet or other work, or even produces something outside
the scope of the charter, I think the community needs her to
speak up and that any attempt to dismiss the concerns on the
grounds of "you should have participated more and earlier" are
not only abusive but pose a danger to the IETF.

The only solution to that sort of time conflict is for the IETF
to become much less ambitious about how much work can be done in
parallel, possibly by constraining the number of WGs.  The
latter has been proposed a few times, but has gone nowhere, I
think in part because even its advocates want whatever work they
want to do next to be treated exceptionally.

I also note that a Last Call complaint (or appeal, or suggestion
of intent to appeal) on the grounds that a document on which an
IETF Last Call has been initiated exceeds the scope of the
relevant WG Charter has ever gone anywhere.  It isn't clear to
me how cases like that should be handled because the work has
typically been completed and there is no obvious basis for
sending the document back to the WG for technical corrections.
The community should probably fire ADs who let that sort of
thing happen, but (without guessing at what discussions occur
within the Nomcom) there is little evidence of community
willingness to do that either.

      john