Re: [Pesci-discuss] Growing concerns about PESCI

[Leslie Daigle <[e-mail]>]

Here's a specific aspect I'd like to hear the community at large
thinking about, re. PESCI (please read all the way to the
bottom to get the actual question; it may not be what you
expect):

We're not doing this as a WG because we (agreed we) don't like those 
nasty spiralling pointless and painful discussions of the current state
of the lint in the IETF navel, and the lack of detectable consensus.
We have a "-discuss" mailing list and a "design team" instead.
On the "-discuss" list, the lead of the design team has asked
folks to hash through issues, review the document, and contribute
brain trust.

Or: what a normal WG would be expected to do.

The big difference is -- there is absolutely no piece of IETF
standards process that *requires* that the "design team" listen to any
of the points provided on the "-discuss" list.  There is a tacit
requirement, in that one presumes the appropriate AD will be recalled if
the result is clearly and obviously out of step with what the community
asks, but that's a high-risk negative motivation.


So, a genuine question:  is PESCI blurring lines, or does
this suggest that we have in fact given up on WGs/our process?

Leslie.



John C Klensin wrote:
> Harald,
> 
> I don't want to have this turn into a discussion among a handful
> of current or recent IESG or IAB members, so will respond to
> some of you note and then go quiet again.  The bottom line, IMO,
> is that if others in the community are not concerned about this
> and willing to speak up, then PESCI and how it is being
> positioned are what the IETF wants and deserves... and so be it.
> 
> --On Tuesday, 25 October, 2005 06:36 -0700 Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Some notes on a couple of your points.....
>>
>>--On 25. oktober 2005 08:48 -0400 John C Klensin
>><[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>-----------------------
> 
> 
>>... 
>>
>>>(1) Design teams tend to self-constitute although they can be
>>>selected.  When they are selected by a WG Chair or AD, the
>>>membership criteria are usually clear and then followed.  In
>>>this case, membership selection was filtered based, in part,
>>>on the participants not being an activist and, specifically,
>>>not having current drafts for reform.  Yet the organizer has a
>>>reform draft, and is generating new versions of it, and is an
>>>exception. (20050923)
>>
>>I've never seen a design team that had clear mebership
>>criteria..... apart from the self-selecting variety, the
>>versions I've seen have all been "you look like good people;
>>would you care to spend time here".
> 
> 
> Sure.  But this isn't an ordinary design team.  The IETF Chair
> issued a call for volunteers and explicitly stated criteria for
> selection that he then proceeded to violate (not just with
> himself but with you, since you are co-author of a process
> reform draft that has just been last-called and a significant
> contributor to some of the ISD/SRD work).  Now perhaps the
> "activist" / "author of drafts" criterion should be interpreted
> much more narrowly as applying only to people who have proposed
> changes to the process approval mechanism and have written
> active drafts containing those proposals.  That would exclude a
> somewhat smaller population, I think limited to me, but would
> have been an irrelevant criterion for PESCI membership selection
> since I did not volunteer.
> 
> 	(Disclosure: I didn't volunteer not because I considered
> 	this hopeless or because I was convinced that Brian
> 	would not pick me (neither was the case), but because my
> 	travel and non-IETF commitment schedule over the last
> 	several months made it extremely unlikely that I could
> 	meet PESCI's workload requirements.)
> 
> More important, there have been hints of the work of this effort
> being approved by extraordinary means, it is reasonably rare
> that a design team gets a BOF and then a significant block of
> plenary time to present and discuss the results of that BOF at
> the same IETF meeting, etc.  Precisely because of the
> complications of the leadership roles, other activities of this
> effort need to be far more open, public, careful, and generally
> sensitive to an open process and IETF community involvement than
> usual.   I remained silent because I hoped that level of
> sensitivity would prevail and that this would be efficient.  I
> am not feeling very good about that right now.
> 
> 
>>>(3) The "team" is expected to report at the Plenary, partially
>>>on the basis of its BOF meeting, but the BOF ends only one
>>>50-minute break before the plenary.  Not exactly time for the
>>>team to meet, carefully consider the discussion at the BOF,
>>>and prepare a report.  Indeed, while it is reasonable to hope
>>>for something else, this would appear to be a setup for the
>>>"well, we just got a lot of input and are thinking about it,
>>>stay tuned" reports that characterized the admin restructuring
>>>process.
>>
>>I very much agree. We specified "must be before the Plenary"
>>in the request for a slot, and did not specify *how long*
>>before the plenary - and got the (IMHO) worst possible time.
>>Then we didn't flag this as an emergency in the rescheduling
>>phase. A mistake.
> 
> 
> Obviously one that is not important enough to try fixing, given
> that we've changed agenda scheduling a lot closer to actual WG
> sessions than two weeks in advance and the IESG presumably has
> considerable involvement and skin in this game.    I don't want
> to start second-guessing the IESG, the IAD, and the Secretariat,
> but it looks to me as if, even at this late date, IPR (which is
> scheduled in the 1850-1950 slot on Tuesday) is in the same Area
> and would have most of the same conflict constraints as PESCI.
> If PESCI is really important to be given that sort of plenary
> time and is a team effort rather than a one-person show with the
> team providing some occasional calibration, why not make that
> swap or some other one?
> 
> 
>>(note: at the time of the BOF request being sent in, Brian was
>>acting as AD, and I was being proposed as BOF chair. With the
>>reshuffling of the "oversight AD" role, Brian took over the
>>chairmanship.)
> 
> 
> I want to apologize in advance to you and Brian for the metaphor
> I'm about to use, but I can't think of a better one at the
> moment and I think the point has to be made strongly.   As with
> my earlier comments about the nature of meaningful reclusal, I
> think the IETF is effective and its results meaningful only so
> long as we can focus on content rather than form.  In a
> situation where we were looking, as a community, for technical
> or policy recommendations, I think we all need to be much more
> interested in the identify and behavior of the puppetmaster
> rather than in the puppet(s). Small changes of formal roles are
> unimportant if the underlying relationships are unchanged.  
> 
> Brian remains General AD regardless on who on the IESG is
> nominally responsible, Brian created PESCI on his own initiative
> as General AD and IETF Chair and took rather extensive
> responsibility for it, Brian is chairing the group itself and,
> to judge from the public mailing, telling its participants
> rather clearly what he wants discussed, and, regardless of who
> is chairing the BOF, he is chairing the plenary and has
> presumably exercised his authority as IETF Chair to give PESCI a
> big slot of that agenda (half as long as the BOF session
> assuming there is no discussion of its topics during the
> slightly-open mike period.  Maybe that is ok, but, IMO, making
> and keeping it ok calls for a standard of openness and community
> involvement that is not being met.
> 
> 
>>To my mind, it is good that the PESCI BOF covers some of the
>>ground covered before - ignoring it would have been extremely
>>stupid.
> 
> 
> Sure.  But, based on the mailing list discussions and minutes,
> the previous ground is being largely ignored.  If it weren't
> being ignored, I'd expect to see the discussions include a lot
> interactions of nature of "the dead whale WG discussed this
> issue and concluded XYY but was unable to do anything with that,
> we can build on it by...".   Instead, the appearance is that all
> of those "old ground" issues are being discussed as if they were
> new and there had been no previous community thinking about
> them.   And that is what I am objecting to.   Maybe PESCI needed
> to start with a clean page on the theory that all of the
> previous efforts ended in futility or produced results that
> didn't improve anything, but no one has said that.  Without it,
> precisely want seems to be going on is ignoring that prior work.
> I'll let you characterize the intelligence of that as you like.
> 
> 
>>Note on the relationship to NEWTRK:
>>The issues PESCI is looking at - for instance the Chair role
>>and the IESG role - are definitely *outside* the remit of
>>NEWTRK.
> 
> 
> But there has been some discussion of NEWTRK issues on the PESCI
> mailing list that no one has declared out of order.  There have
> also been items on the Newtrk agenda or as part of its
> discussions that PESCI does seem to be preempting or ignoring.  
> 
> 
>>Asking a group that is flailing/failing wrt its current scope
>>to take on work beyond that scope is generally not what I
>>consider useful.
> 
> 
> Sure.  But, if the IESG --or even the General AD-- have
> concluded that Newtrk is flailing or failing, the
> procedurally-correct action is to either reduce its scope to
> topics on which it is accomplishing something or to just close
> it.  Neither of those things has been done.  Instead Newtrk has
> just been cut off at the knees by preempting some of its agenda
> and, to some extent, starving it for resource (I note that it is
> not scheduled to meet in Vancouver.  That may be a fine
> decision, but do you really believe Newtrk would not be meeting
> if PESCI were not getting the attention of the relevant AD and
> others).
> 
> Speaking only as myself.
> 
>       john
> 
> 
> 
> 
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