Re: Dispute process (Was: Resignation request)

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 10 Mar 2020, at 14:45, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 12:11:47PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:
>>
>> Nico, could you (or others) expand on this?
>
> Yes.  Challenging consensus is difficult.  People with substantive
> commentary sometimes get tanks driven over them.

It is difficult, and I have seen those tanks in the past. What I would 
say is that we've gotten to a point where dispute resolution and appeals 
are seen as such a big deal that people definitely get their armaments 
going quickly. I'm hoping this discussion can give us (participants and 
leadership) some paths back to being a bit more sane about this. More 
below.

>> I really think this is worthy of a separate discussion: What is it 
>> about the
>> current process that you find biased against those who bring up a 
>> dispute?
>
> If you get left on the rough side of consensus, whether rightly or
> wrongly, and you wish to challenge this, it's really difficult.  You
> might have to file an appeal, and if you do you'll annoy and anger
> people who want their RFCs published a year ago.

This to me says that we've got to start dealing with the disputes 
earlier in the process to avoid the "annoy and anger" part (though 
sometimes that will be unavoidable). At the time of the WG decision, 
before anything goes to the IESG, it's time to have a discussion with 
the chair. That's before 2026 6.5.1 imagines it, but I don't think 
that's a problem for the first steps.

>> (I take it we're talking about RFC 2026 section 6.5
>> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-6.5>.) Have you 
>> encountered a
>> bias in undertaking such a dispute?
>
> 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.

Framing the discussion in the terms that 2026 uses is a good idea: 
Either "my views have not been adequately considered by the WG", or "the 
WG has made an incorrect technical choice". I'd start off with, "I think 
you may have blown the consensus call on this point. I'd like to discuss 
that." Not accusatory or angry, just stating the facts. If the chair 
reacts badly to that, let the AD (and perhaps some others) know. All of 
us who chair should learn how to deal with such comments calmly and 
seriously. If you and the chair both take it seriously, it can only 
improve the output of the WG for the chair to consider it.

> There's no easy way to challenge a consensus to drop a work item.  
> What
> are you gonna do, appeal asking the IAB to force a WG to take on a 
> work
> item it doesn't want to?  A WG could even conclude out of spite if
> forced to do something it doesn't want to.

You're right that forcing the WG to do work isn't feasible. But I could 
imagine other choices. Not knowing the specifics, though, I don't want 
to speculate on what might have worked.

> So there was no question of appeal, really.  But I do feel that the
> chairs and responsible AD did not help enough ahead of the WG throwing
> its hands up in the air -- that might be an incorrect perception 
> though,
> as maybe the chairs and AD were simply unable to get the strongest
> personalities on either side of the dispute to compromise, but, too, I
> think they could have called the consensus rather than wait till the 
> WG
> threw in the towel on the work item.

I think you're probably right. I know I've chaired in the past when I 
didn't see the signs of bad things happening and failed to get out in 
front of it. But the appeal, even if fruitless in the end, would have at 
least made the chair, the AD, and IESG do a bit of post-mortem to figure 
out what went wrong, so we should figure out some way to make them less 
painful (as per your last paragraph).

>> I have no doubt that this process is under-used (as a chair and an 
>> AD, I had
>
> I've reached out to chairs and ADs a number of times before, and that
> has worked, and can work where they're willing to.

That's good to hear.

> It's difficult to go beyond that to appeals.  We do have to be done at
> some point with any one work item.  There is good will to tend to.

On a technical point where someone feels that the WG truly failed to see 
a serious problem, it's worth certainly worth doing. But even in the 
more process cases, where it was a blown consensus call, I do think it's 
worth going through, even if it doesn't change the outcome for any 
particular work item and is just for post-mortem purposes.

> The OP of this thread's parent thread clearly felt much more strongly
> about their case than anyone did about the TLS DNSSEC extension.  No 
> one
> in the latter case felt so aggrieved as to post a "resignation 
> request".

Yeah, I'll reply to Alan after this. I think the case should also be 
instructive.

>> to actively encourage people to use the dispute process instead of 
>> just
>> giving up), but I've always assumed that it was just people not 
>> wanting to
>> "rock the boat", or not wanting to be seen as a "complainer", or 
>> thought
>
> There is definitely some of that.

I did a little review some time ago of the appeals brought to the IESG. 
Approximately half of them were perfectly well-reasoned appeals made by 
serious people in the community, and as I remember in the majority of 
them the IESG said, "Oh, yeah, that wasn't a good outcome; let's fix 
it." The approximately other half of the appeals were made by a small 
number of people who I'd call "serial appealers". It's the latter half 
that makes people feel like complainers (by joining that club), but if 
you remove those folks, I think you'll find the outcome of the process 
is pretty good and nobody will call you a complainer for it. (No, I will 
not reveal my criteria for deciding between the two halves. Left as an 
exercise for the reader.)

> Or at some point a party gets exhausted and gives up.

That, of course, is a horrible outcome and what we need to fix.

> Some of this is that we're a somewhat academic bunch (RFCs count as
> papers now, no?) and you know how it is with academics: the lower the
> stakes the worse the infighting.

As a recovering academic, I know what you mean.

> 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.

Absolutely. Every IETF plenary, the chairs have a lunch meeting on a 
variety of topics. Doing something like this as a regular topic (and 
revealing the conclusions to the community) would be a great idea. That 
said, I'm still hopeful we can make the dispute resolution and appeals 
process better than it is now.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best