Re: hampering progress

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 4/21/21 1:06 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:

> Michael, I hav eno idea whether your work was or was not appropriate 
> for the QUIC working group.
>
> Arguing that working group chairs an not declare things out of scope 
> weakens your overall argument.  Working groups have charters.  The 
> chairs are expected to work within the charter. Working group email 
> lists are for discussion of topics relevant to the working group.
>
> Now, I will grant that charters are not precise.  Topics are not 
> precise.  And chairs should (and generally do) err on the side of 
> allowing some latitude.
> But claiming that chairs can not rule things as being out of scope 
> does not match our process, and would hamper our work.  (Who has, as 
> WG co-chair, suggested to more than one author team that the 
> independent stream would make a better home for their work, as it does 
> not fit the charter of the working group.) 

Concur with Joel on the above.

Also, if you believe that a WG chair is unfairly excluding contributions 
that are within the WG's charter, that seems like grounds for an appeal, 
and differences of opinion about such judgments are one of the reasons 
that we have an appeals process.

In other words, if a dispute can be handled by existing process, trying 
to let that process work might be the best thing to do. If you try the 
process and it doesn't work for whatever reason, maybe there's a bigger 
problem there.

But no matter what the process, some bad decisions, and some disputes, 
are both inevitable.   As long as there is some way to appeal such 
decisions, the fact that chairs sometimes make what seem like bad 
decisions about what's in scope for a group is not by itself an 
indication of a structural flaw.

Keith