RE: Dispute process (Was: Resignation request)

[Andrew Alston <[e-mail]>]

So,

As one of the people that openly supported the original request for resignation by Sander - I felt that - it may be helpful to understand from my side *why* I so strongly supported it - and why I believe, still, that it was a fair option.

Firstly - let me say this - there are several outstanding, unaddressed issues in this draft - and the moment that this formally goes into last call (which it still hasn't left despite the emails from Martin) that appeal will be coming - that is guaranteed.  However, the fact that this was moved out of last call had very little to do with the request for the resignation.  What triggered this was the fact that despite mail after mail after mail in the preceding days - within 2 hours of another edition of the draft being published that directly went to what was being discussed, somehow, consensus was declared.  This denied anyone the opportunity to comment on, digest or respond to the proposed wording, and the wording was material, it wasn't simply a syntax change.

Secondly - The original shepherd document did not once - in the entire document - mention the word consensus outside of where it referred to the consensus achieved on RFC8200.  Instead - it cited a bunch of +1's as an indication that the document had support.  I point out that this runs totally and utterly contrary to everything stated in RFC7282.

This was flagrant, and blatant abuse of process in my view - and it was rail roading through a document that both myself and others dispute there is any form of consensus on.  I do not for one second believe that consensus means we have to agree on everything, consensus means issues have to be addressed and closed - they are not - they were still under heavy discussion - and there are other issues which I have cited on this list, where promises to address things were made,  and never followed through on.  

So - Why not move straight away and ask for a formal recall process?  Firstly - I've long believed in transparency - hence, if I am going to do something, I am going to do it publicly, and I am going to stand by it - that is in my view absolutely critical in a bottom up organization.  Secondly, invoking a formal recall process against someone is a hell of a thing to do - once started - if recalled - that person has been formally recalled for the rest of his days.  I prefer to give someone the option of saying "I screwed up" and stepping aside before invoking such a process - and that is not to say that there will NOT be a formal recall request coming - in fact - its under heavy consideration for both what happened in this instance and for other reasons that have been raised since that request for resignation went out.  

I know that many will go - follow the process - and as I said, I for one, am quite happy to do that, but I believe that giving someone the option to step aside before you institute such process against them is actually the kinder option, and is no less public than a formal recall request would be, since in the spirit of transparency, any such formal request would almost certainly be as public as a request to resign, made so either by IETF process or by the initiators of said process. 

I realize that as with many things in life, we may not always agree - but that being said - the request was transparent, and I still believe, on the basis of the actions taken by the AD - entirely valid.  

Andrew



-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Paul Wouters
Sent: Tuesday, 10 March 2020 22:08
To: Nico Williams <[e-mail]>
Cc: Alex Bogdanov <bogdanov=[e-mail]>; SPRING WG List <[e-mail]>; IETF <[e-mail]>; Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Dispute process (Was: Resignation request)

On Mar 10, 2020, at 14:45, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:

> What I've encountered is that at the limit you have to appeal or give 
> up, and how well things go before you get to that stage depends on how 
> willing WG chairs and responsible AD are to actively mediate dispute 
> resolution.
> 
> The case I felt went really badly was the TLS DNSSEC extension.  

I agree and while that case was bad, what’s worse is that no post-mortem was done here. I don’t think the IETF as an organization will take any lesson from this, and that in itself makes it likely the same mistakes will be made again.

> So there was no question of appeal, really.  

I think also because in the appeal some of the same actors would appear. 

> Not sure how to make it better, except maybe thus: it should be 
> possible to get a review of how a dispute was resolved not so much as 
> an appeal, but as a way to remediate problems to help alleviate _next_ dispute.


Going back to this thread, when I read the subject of resignation and the first email, it seemed like I just stumbled across a hallway fight - people that demand unreasonable things. I don’t know how this conflict went from nothing to asking for someone’s resignation but clearly more people should have been involved earlier to de-escalate this. maybe that was tried and just not visible here? It would be good if there had been some kind of log that could have been referenced so we could determine why this failed to de-escalate.

Paul