On Experts [Re: Should I* opinions be afforded a special status? (Re: [saag] Declining the ifare bof for Chicago)]

[Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>]

On 2007-06-15 18:04, Michael Thomas wrote:
> Thomas Narten wrote:
> > If a respected security expert (one who has reviewed many documents,
> > contributed significantly to WG efforts, etc.) comes to a WG and says
> > "there is a problem here", but 5 WG members stand up and say "I
> > disagree and don't see a problem", do you really expect the security
> > expert's opinion to be given strictly equal weight and to just be
> > overruled since 5 voices are greater than 1?
> >   
> Context matters here. I've seen situations where the so-called "expert"
> is unable to articulate the problem, is rocking a personal hobby
> horse of theirs, is expressing a general philosophic point without much
> attention to the actual problem (see "unable to articulate"). Etc. Also:
> it may just be me, but this gradual creep toward "experts" having a
> named, and different status is bothersome ("expert review"). It sweeps
> under the rug that this is really a continuum of cluefulness, experience,
> as well as frankly political considerations, some of which are more
> odious than others.

Mike, just to try clarify the "expert review" issue. That term comes
up specifically for IANA assignments that are controlled more than
First Come First Served and less than RFC Required. There's a full
discussion in draft-narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis but my
short version is: we can't expect IANA to have in-house expertise
for every registry, and we don't want an IETF debate about every
relatively routine assignment. Having designated experts seems to
be the only reasonable and scaleable solution.

I prefer personally to use a term like "specialist" for review
of drafts, or "generalist" in the case of Gen-ART reviews. You
can be a specialist without being an expert :-)

     Brian

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