Re: [Rfced-future] [rfc-i] RSWG & AUTH48 (was Re: [admin-discuss] Public archival of AUTH48 communications)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Thursday, March 3, 2022 14:15 -0500 Michael Richardson
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
>     > Of course not. That is the point of backroom dealings!
> 
> at least, if you are any good at them.
> 
>     > More seriously, there is a continuum here, and
> transparency could help     > keeping everyone subtly more
> honest.
> 
> I would say it differently.
> 
> People not involved any a specific AUTH48 can't be sure what
> horse trading may have occurred during the editing, or who
> initiated it. ADs might be able to say that they have never
> seen any backroom dealings, and specific authors may agree for
> specific documents, but suspicious could still remain.
> 
> Having a public audit trail just makes everyone feel happy.

 
>     > But I'm really not so concerned about backroom deals,
> but simply with     > the lack of breadth of the small group
> finishing the AUTH48.
> 
> Agreed.

It once again feels to me as if two separate concerns are being
conflated and that the above identifies them.

Concern 1: There is a suspicion that something nefarious is
going on.
	Plausible solution: Make the correspondence public
	either in real time or on request later. (Not a perfect
	solution, see "observation" below.)

Concern 2: The AUTH48 reviewers lack breadth or are sufficiently
invested in one vision of the document to not be able to
reliably make good critical decisions consistent with consensus
of the Stream/ Approving body.   Using the IETF Stream as an
example, with no malice at all, inconsistency between the views
of the community and those of the authors and IESG could be
another part of this concern.
	Plausible solution:  Figure out a better way to allow
	broader review immediately pre-publication. 

Observation: those two concerns are not mutually exclusive and
neither are the plausible solutions.  And the weakness in the
proposed solution to Concern 1 is that, if there is information
about the reason to make one seemingly equivalent choice over
another that should not be generally discussed or, if someone
actually and intentionally wanted to do something nefarious, the
proposal would allow either to be kept out of the public record,
with no way to tell them apart.   Because of the first case,
forcing all AUTH48 correspondence to be public might easily
result in lower-quality documents.

    best,
    john