Re: Question about pre-meeting document posting deadlines for the IESG and the community

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 22 Mar 2024, at 15:02, S Moonesamy wrote:

> Hi Pete, John,
> At 07:25 PM 16-03-2024, Pete Resnick wrote:
>> But this seems to me too high a burden. If a chair wants to make an 
>> exception, they should be empowered to do so and not make this depend 
>> on an AD OK, particularly right before a meeting where ADs have lots 
>> of other things to deal with. And if a chair or an AD is not directly 
>> involved, there is no reason an author shouldn't be able to submit a 
>> document that has nothing to do with a WG.
>
> The WG Chairs are allowed to make an exception.  If I remember 
> correctly, the AD may have to "push a button" to release the I-D from 
> the queue.

As far as I know, the WG Chairs still have to ask permission of the AD, 
and then the AD must manually ask the secretariat to process the 
document; there is no button to push. One part of this is the tool, and 
I should probably "put my money where mouth is" and help at the Code 
Sprint to write the tooling to make this possible. But the other part of 
it is policy, which I think should be made more flexible.

>> We are using the accident of an old set of circumstances to drive 
>> procedures rather that discussing what we really want out of the 
>> tooling. Please let's stop doing that.
>
> Yes.
>
> Some of the side effects of the accident of history is that the 
> two-weeks no-I-D window prevents non-WG I-D from being posted and the 
> I-D flood at the beginning of the meeting week.

Yep. And the fixed two weeks means that there is a flood two weeks 
before, where some WG chairs might be OK with one week, or require three 
weeks, or be OK with two days before. The accident of history should not 
constrain us.

>> (During a chat last night, Barry reminded me that when a change was 
>> proposed several years ago, some chairs objected to the change 
>> because they did not want the responsibility to allow exceptions and 
>> instead wanted it to be an AD override so they could claim 
>> powerlessness to insistent authors. I find such an argument a sign of 
>> complete dysfunction.)
>
> It's a bit politically unfriendly to take such a decision.

Yes, that's why they "pay us the big bucks". Chairs sometimes have to 
make unpopular decisions and say no to pushy authors. I promise to be 
supportive.

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