Re: Last Call: <draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt> (IETF Working Groups' Secretaries) to Best Current Practice

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 12/3/14 5:40 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> This document is not ready for prime time in its current form.
> It is part of a style of doing things by making more rules or
> apparent rules that is actually hazardous to the further of the
> IETF as anything but a traditional SDO that approves things on
> the basis of procedure-conformance rather than thinking.  If
> approved for publication at all, it should be approved only
> after revision to make it very clear it is about suggestions
> that might be applicable to some situations, with those
> situations at WG Chair discretion.

I'd like to echo what John said.  I'm somewhat concerned that
the growth of the wg secretary role has something to do with
an inability (or unwillingness) to deal directly with poor chair
performance.  Individual chairs may prefer to have the
assistance but I am truly sorry to see this becoming typical
working group practice.  "All problems can be solved by introducing
a layer of indirection" may be a slightly entertaining joke
about programming practice but it seems a woeful approach to
organizational problems.

Melinda