Re: [mpowr] Re: Getting Bad Ideas to Fail Early

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, David Partain (LI/EAB) wrote:

> Who will a working group listen to?

From process point of view, the working group does not have to listen
to any reviewer. They can, technically, mark each submitted review
with "we disagree" and let IESG resolve all the conflicts.

> They currently must listen to the IESG.  Is the IETF willing to
> invest reviewers with similar weight?

IETF should be willing and able to design exit criteria that allow
some documents to get published without IESG involvement. This does
not assign same weight to reviewers as to IESG, but it does assign
some weight.

In other words, reviewers can "clear" a document (if all reviewers and
the WG agrees and there is sufficient coverage). However, reviewers
cannot kill the document. Only IESG can.

> Where are these fabled reviewers?  Does nomcom have to find
> them?  Do they volunteer and go through a screening process?  Can
> they be "fired"?

This is where proposals differ a lot. I advocate an open pool of
volunteers without a special screening process, but with "trusted by
AD", "trusted by IESG" or similar flags that are assigned to _some_
fabled reviewers by ADs, IESG, etc.

> What do we do if the WG refuses to acknowledge that an idea is
> "bad" and forges ahead?

Wait for IESG to decide. It would be nice to design some procedure for
IESG to decide sooner (early) rather than at PS stage.

> Won't that likely mean it'll just get bounced back by the IESG?

Yes, it is likely. However, we can only have a single vetoing entity
for each document. Having two vetoing entities (one for each document
category or whatever) seems too complicated to me. So IESG remains the
final conflict resolution entity.

> What role do(es) the chair(s) have in all of this?  Are they simply
> the messenger between the reviewers and the working group?  The
> advocate of the consensus decision?

The chair has no special role in this process, IMO. I do not see a
need for messenger here. If there is a human messenger, we need to
care about the message integrity and delivery.

Instead, each document has a single point of contact: a dedicated WG
e-mail address (or author's address for individual submissions).
Notification of submitted reviews or any status changes are
automatically sent to that address.

> To reiterate:  I think we need this.  I just don't know if we (the
> IETF) are willing to do what it seems to imply -- give someone
> besides the IESG veto power.

I do not think review implies that reviewer has a veto power. A
reviewer is an analyst or an advisor. A reviewer does not have to be a
decision maker.

Alex.

_______________________________________________
mpowr mailing list
mpowr@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mpowr