Re: PROTO Process

[Andrew Sullivan <ajs at shinkuro.com>]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:34:16PM +0200, Jari Arkko wrote:

> progress of drafts through the IESG process. There are several problems  
> in this, including:
>
> - the fact that 82% of drafts have to be modified during AD review -  
> IESG review (and the rest probably have RFC Editor notes)

Surely that problem is not something that can be solved by procedural
rules?  If there is so much need for modification during AD review, it
suggests that documents are coming from WGs without being ready.  If
that is indeed the problem, I find it pretty hard to imagine the mere
procedural tweak that will solve it.

The alternative explanation is that the "have to be modified" could be
stated slightly differently as "have to be modified to get through" AD
review, which is the sort of thing I sometimes hear people saying.
This locution suggests that people do not regard the IETF and AD
reviews as useful tests that improve the technical quality of a
document, but that instead the reviews are regarded as hurdles to
clear on the way to publishing an RFC.  This might suggest a
reluctance to compromise that is not ideally matched for our
consensus-based approach.  If that's right (and I don't know whether
it is), then no procedural tweaks will fix it either, because the
problem is still the suitability of the documents for publication as
RFCs unless we abandon rough consensus as a test.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.