Re: Dispute process (Was: Resignation request)

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Nico,
On 11-Mar-20 07:45, Nico Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 12:11:47PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:
>> On 10 Mar 2020, at 10:41, Nico Williams wrote:
>>
>>> ...the process we have for
>>> dealing with complaints is heavily biased against plaintiffs -- which is
>>> probably as it should be, as otherwise we might never get anything done,
>>> but then legitimate complaints don't get heard.  I feel OP's
>>> frustration.
>>
>> Nico, could you (or others) expand on this?
> 
> Yes.  Challenging consensus is difficult.  People with substantive
> commentary sometimes get tanks driven over them.  I've a few stories of
> this.  One fairly recent one involving the TLS WG.
> 
>> 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, 

Well yes. There's no way round that - you're on the losing side, which
has been a bad deal throughout human history. But at least there *is*
an appeal process (which in practice there wouldn't be, if we used
majority voting to make decisions). That doesn't indicate bias in
the process.

> and if you do you'll annoy and anger
> people who want their RFCs published a year ago.

Again, that doesn't indicate bias in the process.
 
>> (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.

Of course. But isn't that exactly why the appeals process exists? To
put pressure on chairs and ADs to mediate? I assure you that it's
much more uncomfortable for them to handle a formal appeal than
to try mediation.

I'll stop there because I have precisely zero knowledge of the case
you cite.

    Brian

> 
> The case I felt went really badly was the TLS DNSSEC extension.  I don't
> want to summarize that here because it will be too easy to accidentally
> or unconsciously mischaracterize some detail and trigger a flame war.
> 
> That case left many palpably angry, including myself.  The resolution of
> that case, BTW, was that the WG decided to drop the work item and let
> each do their own extension via the ISE.  IMO that is less than ideal
> because if it keeps happening then we're going to have a large TLS
> extension support matrix and our users will be sad.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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".
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Or at some point a party gets exhausted and gives up.
> 
> 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.
> 
>> that nobody up the chain would take them seriously. Those are serious
>> problems and we should be figuring out how to address them, since people
>> bringing up failures is the only way we can stop bad things from happening
>> when a WG or someone in leadership gets tunnel vision and does the wrong
>> thing. However, this is the first time I've heard someone express that the
>> process itself is stacked against someone with a dispute. If that's true, we
>> should really talk about how to fix that.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Nico
>