[mpowr] Re: [Solutions] Further work on WG (chair) roles - MPOWR WG proposal

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 12/15/03 at 9:28 AM -0800, James Kempf wrote:

>We're facing this problem right now in Seamoby. We sent one document 
>out to a review committee at my request (I'm the co-chair), and it 
>came back with a list of problems the reviewers wanted to see fixed. 
>But the reviewer's comments were not any more binding on the design 
>than any others, and the WG members quibbled with the reviewers on 
>the WG list until the reviewers gave up, essentially a successful 
>DoS attack.

Depending on the details here, I don't think you need any additional 
authority to hold this document. It's for exactly the same reasons 
that a big company can't (or shouldn't be able to) "pack a room" at 
the IETF and win by a majority: A huge bunch of people agreeing to 
something does not make a rough consensus when there is a significant 
though smaller group of folks who disagree and the larger group isn't 
willing to justify their position.

So in your case: If you had a reasonable size reviewer committee (not 
just 1 or 2 people), that means that you've got a significant number 
of folks who think there are real problems with the document. Once 
they started commenting on the documents, they effectively became 
part of the WG. If by "gave up", you mean they simply stopped posting 
responses in disgust (as opposed to eventually agreeing with the rest 
of the WG), then you can reasonably say that your WG did *not* come 
to rough consensus on those issues. You can say, "Look folks, there 
are well-argued open issues on the list. I have heard quibbles, but I 
have heard nothing so far that actually addresses those issues. 
That's people talking past eachother, but it's not rough consensus. I 
won't pass the documents on until we achieve rough consensus."

Now, if you only had 1 or 2 reviewers and they were unable to garner 
any additional support, or if the reviewers really did agree with the 
rest of the WG and you're the only one left, or if the WG actually 
gave well-reasoned arguments why the outstanding issues aren't really 
problems but you happen to disagree with them, then you *should* 
declare rough consensus and pass the document on. If the problems 
with the document are really that bad, then there should be a 
reasonable contingent that will object when IETF Last Call comes 
around and their won't be IETF-wide consensus. But mind you, if it 
comes down to that, the process broke down long ago: Either there 
weren't enough intelligent people in the WG to do reasonable work (in 
which case it shouldn't have been chartered), or something got out of 
control in the WG some time ago. That can and will happen in WGs, but 
giving more formal authority to WG chairs isn't addressing that 
problem.
-- 
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]

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