Re: [spring] Dispute process (Was: Resignation request)

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 10 Mar 2020, at 18:34, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 03:07:53PM -0400, Paul Wouters wrote:
>> On Mar 10, 2020, at 14:45, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> 
>> wrote:
>>> What I've encountered is that at the limit you have to appeal or 
>>> give
>>> up, and how well things go before you get to that stage depends on 
>>> how
>>> willing WG chairs and responsible AD are to actively mediate dispute
>>> resolution.
>>>
>>> The case I felt went really badly was the TLS DNSSEC extension.
>>
>> I agree and while that case was bad, what’s worse is that no
>> post-mortem was done here. I don’t think the IETF as an 
>> organization
>> will take any lesson from this, and that in itself makes it likely 
>> the
>> same mistakes will be made again.
>
> +1.
>
> Perhaps we need a procedure for lodging complaints that aren't 
> appeals,
> and which result in a review and report.

Adding a "report back" step to the less formal part of RFC 2026 6.5.1 
would probably be a good practice. I know I did do this when an issue 
was "semi-formally" brought to my attention some years ago.

>>> So there was no question of appeal, really.
>>
>> I think also because in the appeal some of the same actors would 
>> appear.
>
> The whole point of an appeal is to get the IETF chair, or the IAB, to
> step in.  The route to appeal was mooted by the WG's choice to abandon
> the work item.

Again, remember that there's a less formal part, before the chair, whole 
IESG, or IAB step into the picture. That might have been the appropriate 
move in this case.

> (A cynic might wonder if that choice was not purposeful, precisely to
> allow the original work to continue unimpeded [perhaps] on the ISE 
> track
> with an appeal mooted.  I do not believe that was the case.)

As Paul alluded to, it all assume that the ISE accepts the documents. If 
not, more fun may occur.

>> Going back to this thread, when I read the subject of resignation and
>> the first email, it seemed like I just stumbled across a hallway 
>> fight
>> - people that demand unreasonable things. I don’t know how this
>> conflict went from nothing to asking for someone’s resignation but
>> clearly more people should have been involved earlier to de-escalate
>> this. maybe that was tried and just not visible here? It would be 
>> good
>> if there had been some kind of log that could have been referenced so
>> we could determine why this failed to de-escalate.
>
> +1

Yep.

> I wouldn't want to drag the ombudsman into this, but maybe that's the
> next best step.

I would refer you to RFC 7776. I don't think this would be in the 
ombudsteam's purview. (Not trying to get out of work, really!)

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