To "lose the argument in the WG"

["Pete Resnick" <[e-mail]>]

Twice in as many days I've seen folks make the argument that a WG 
participant ought not bring up an issue during IETF Last Call that was 
already discussed in the WG because that participant "lost the argument" 
in the WG. I hate the construction, and I think even making the claim 
harms the process.

In one case, it appears that the chair judged that the WG couldn't come 
to consensus on a definitive statement and therefore concluded that a 
compromise statement was appropriate. It is quite appropriate for WG 
participants to say during Last Call, "We think the chair made an error. 
There remains a technical failing in this document that is not 
appropriately addressed by the compromise language. We tried to convince 
the chair of this, to no avail, and hope that others in the community 
review this particular point and maybe try to make the case clearer than 
we were able to." That's going to require some rehashing, though 
hopefully the chair and/or AD can fairly summarize the arguments and why 
they came to the conclusion they did, which should shorten the 
discussion. But the points need to be brought out, the in-the-rough WG 
participants should be able to identify where the perceived error was 
made, and the community can put in its two cents. You can't say, at this 
point, that anyone "lost the argument", and certainly not that they 
ought to be quiet.

(In that particular case, I've also seen people say, "I give up; I'm not 
discussing it anymore". That's a pain, since the issue hasn't gone away, 
even if the proponent has, so the chair or AD is left to make sure it 
gets dealt with without help. We really need to stop that.)

In the other case, my understanding is that the chair and/or AD judged 
that a particular set of functionality was outside of the scope of the 
document and/or chartered-work in question. The WG participant who felt 
that the functionality should be in-scope and is perfectly within bounds 
to make the case that the functionality is somehow necessary during Last 
Call. The chair and/or AD should summarize why they judged the 
functionality to be out of scope. Others in the community might want to 
take up the argument and explain why it should be added. But again, 
saying that the participant cannot make an argument that was "not won" 
in the WG is unreasonable.

Do note that in both cases, I think it's only fair that the person 
bringing up the issue clearly states what's going on. For instance, in 
the second case the person should really have said, "This was judged 
out-of-scope by the WG/chair, but I think it ought not be out-of-scope 
because of X, Y, and Z". Simply saying, "Please make this change to the 
document" as if it were never discussed before is not helpful to the 
rest of the list during Last Call.

In any event, I think it's vital that the chair and/or AD actively 
manage the Last Call discussion when these sorts of things happen. They 
are the judges of consensus, and they are the ones that are going to 
have to make the call in the end, so having them explain their thinking 
is vital.

End of rant.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - [phone]