Re: ADs speaking for "their" WGs

[Brian E Carpenter <brc at zurich.ibm.com>]

On 2007-04-20 12:07, Frank Ellermann wrote:
> Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>
> > - what we tell the WG chairs is that ADs have the power to make a decision
> > for the working group, in order to break a deadlock. Jeff Schiller (one of
> > the ADs who did the WG chair training for several years) was very clear
> > that an AD can say, "if you guys don't make a decision by date X, I'll make
> > a decision for you". If this is not part of the community understanding,
> > someone should be telling the WG chairs and ADs what the community
> > understanding is.
>
> This is not how I understood it.

It seems fairly clear in RFC 2418 section 6.1:

  "The Chair has the responsibility and the authority to make decisions,
   on behalf of the working group, regarding all matters of working
   group process and staffing, in conformance with the rules of the
   IETF.  The AD has the authority and the responsibility to assist in
   making those decisions at the request of the Chair or when
   circumstances warrant such an intervention."

So the AD *does* have authority *when circumstances warrant*, but
only on matters of process and staffing. I'm sure Jeff Schiller didn't
mean any more than that - this rule doesn't allow an AD to take
technical decisions unilaterally, but does allow an AD to make a
consensus call if for some reason the WG Chairs can't do so. (And
all subject to the regular appeal process, of course.)

> The ADs can appoint new WG Chairs if
> they're unhappy with the old Chairs, they're not forced to accept one of
> the Chairs as document shepherd, and there is (or was) a potential dead
> loop where the reaponsible AD can say "forever" that (s)he doesn't like
> a WG draft because they're unfortunately forced to vote YES otherwise.
>
> But all that doesn't cover "ADs speaking _directly_ for a WG" wrt WG
> drafts, this would remove the first step in the appeal procedure for WGs.
> Please correct me if I got it wrong.  

Speaking for? That would seem strange, even as an interpretation
of "when circumstances warrant such an intervention". But the quote above
does seem to allow an AD to take over for a WG chair as far as running
the discussion is concerned, exceptionally. And yes, that does make the
first two stages of the appeal process (appeal to WG Chair and to AD)
rather empty.

> Likely the rules for liaisons are
> a bit more convoluted, and the rules for WG termination are in RFC 2418
> no matter what ION 3710 says.
>
> > - We have been encouraging greater separation of roles (an extreme case
> > of non-separated roles is a document editor who is also the working group
> > chair, the document shepherd, and the responsible AD for the working group).
>
> > We've been saying that having ADs chair WGs in their own area is not a good
> > thing. We've been saying that having WG chairs edit major documents in their
> > own area is not a good thing. We may want to provide guidance that having
> > ADs chair WG meetings in their own area, especially where there is no other
> > person acting as chair, is not a good thing, and that the ADs really need
> > to find someone else who is willing to chair the meeting, and who is not
> > involved as the next step on the appeals ladder.
>
> Yes.  OTOH if an important author of drafts in a WG volunteers to be an
> AD and gets the job it's ugly if that would force them to give up their
> I-Ds.  All areas (excl. "gen") have two ADs, that offers some leaway.

That's where recusals come from. And the General AD is at liberty to
find another AD to sponsor his or her BOFs or drafts. I did that.

   Brian

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