Subject: RE: [mpowr] WG Formation

From: "Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 17:40:22 +0100

Inline

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Crocker [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: zaterdag 14 februari 2004 17:14
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [mpowr] WG Formation
> 
> 
> (many thanks to bernard for creating this line of discussion 
> and John for
> focusing on the startup issue.)
> 
> 
> JCK>  ...  A decade ago, a BOF
> JCK> (much less a couple of BOFs) were not requirements for creating 
> JCK> a WG.
> 
> In fact, a common requirement for authorizing a BOF was that there
> _already_ be an active mailing list.  If the IETF still believes that
> the primary venue for work is the mailing list, then that is where the
> primary work of _formation_ needs to take place.
> 
> I think that the desires for "give it a try and stop it if there is not
> sufficient progress" can be satisfied entirely by a simple structure
> that involves almost no extra IETF administrative or management effort.
> In fact it will require _less_ effort than needed today:
> 
> 
>      1. Anyone wanting to form a working group must first create a
>      mailing list, and a web page that lists at least a mailing list and
>      archive, and a candidate charter,
> 
>      2. The mailing list must show enough history of activity to assess
>      a pattern, specifically one of productive IETF-like discussion, for
>      the charter and for the actual work.
> 
Interestingly, those two questions and actions is what many (if not all) ADs
ask and want to see before approving a BOF. Some people do not like that...
but... such is life.
So it seems we are doing the right thing?

>      3. The IETF should provide a "WG Formative Efforts" page and list
>      any and all efforts that satisfy step 1.
> 
That would indeed be a nice thing.

>      4. A BOF can be authorized after #2 is satisfied.
> 
Agreed! And that is how I work when people ask me to approve a BOF

Bert

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---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 16:15:25 -0500

--On Saturday, 21 February, 2004 22:41 +0900 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> John,
> 
> 
> JCK> One problem I have with your suggestion -- I think the
> major one JCK> -- is that it would actually reduce our ability
> to say "no, go  JCK> away, this doesn't belong here" in a
> prompt and efficient way.
> 
> It does not do that at all.  I think, perhaps, you've taken my
> suggestion as meaning that performing the steps I described
> would be "sufficient" for gaining working group status.

No, I think it does something a little different.   If we use,
more or less, the current processes (see below), an AD who has
told a group to demonstrate that it can be productive can say,
at almost any time during the pre-WG, pre-BOF proof of concept
period "sorry, this doesn't belong in the IETF, why don't you
find another venue".  If my guess as to how what you have
proposed would play itself out is correct, we would be creating
another "late surprise" situation: a group would go off and
spend a lot of energy trying to prove concern, come in, and be
told, "even if you have demonstrated that you can do that, we
don't want it".  Yes, that helps the IETF statistically -- the
time that is wasted isn't "ours" -- but it isn't good for the
Internet, since some of these activities really could thrive in
other venues.

> My suggestion is not meant to remove any other criteria that
> we already have.
> 
> And let me again stress that my suggestion is nothing but
> codifying existing practise, in or to have it be applied
> consistently, as Bert has essentially pointed out.

No, it takes an existing practice that is used often, sometimes
with great success, and turns it into the _only_ option.   That
ignores and excludes other paths that might work better in
particular situations.   

As others have pointed out, if it were the existing practice,
and it was working well in the overwhelming number of cases, we
wouldn't be having this discussion.  Or we shouldn't be having
it and should, instead, be focusing on the bad practices and/or
stupidity of selected ADs who can't recognize a good thing when
they see it.  But, as far as I can tell, the existing practice,
even when applied, isn't good enough to solve a significant
fraction of the situations we are talking about.  

To draw a perhaps-unfortunate analogy, this suggestion has the
ring of mandatory sentencing laws: if one commits a crime that
meets certain criteria, then the exact penalty is specified by
law, with no possible deviations.  Such things have the
attraction that similar or identical crimes receive identical
punishment, making the system very predictable.  But they fail
to allow for special or unusual circumstances that the criteria
are, inevitably, never good (or prescient) enough to capture.
My own preference --for both sentences and WG creation -- is for
strong guidelines, perhaps even strong enough that judges or ADs
who go outside them are expected to explain their reasoning in
public, but for the flexibility for those people to consider all
of the circumstances of a particular situation and apply
judgment.

> JCK> As Pete points out, it would save surprisingly little in
> terms  JCK> of the other things we do.
> 
> I'm frankly surprised that the difference in management and
> administrative overhead seems such a small thing to you.

That is because I'm not convinced there is much difference in
management and/or administrative overhead.  No matter how we
constitute these things, ADs often have a choice between "manage
now or manage later".  Under your plan, the "now" part becomes
just general oversight.   But where, I think, we may agree is
that WGs that have a clear focus, good understanding of what
they are about, and effective ways of working with the rest of
the IETF simply require much less active management than ones
that fail on one or more of those criteria.  On the principle
that early course corrections typically require fewer turns of
the wheel --and may be more successful-- than later ones, I'd
rather see ADs in a position to decide that spending some energy
on a group early on in the hope that they will run more smoothly
(and require significantly less management time) later is a good
tradeoff.   And, to some extent, your model, in order to make a
reduction in management and administrative time early in a WG's
life, discards the ability to make that sort of decision.

> JCK> Can that be fixed by "changing the context"?  Not, I
> think, in  JCK> the way you suggest.  If we stop the
> circumlocutions, I think  JCK> you are saying "the IESG
> doesn't have what it takes to shut down  JCK> WGs that are not
> being productive".
> 
> The problem is bigger and deeper than that.  Working group
> creation is a particular moment of incentives and leverage.
> After chartering, the only real leverage is changing chairs or
> disbanding the working group.
> 
> First of all, those are big hammers.  Absent smaller ones then
> we should do as much as we can to make sure the big hammer is
> not needed. More stringent "entrance requirements" is a pretty
> obvious way to make sure we are getting better "students" of
> the IETF process.

Well, part of what I've been arguing for is precisely to reduce
the amount of energy it takes to lift and swing those hammers.
We've seen perfectly good WGs that would meet any entrance
criteria one could identify go off in the weeds after a while,
and seen external developments create situations in which the WG
is just on the wrong track (even if it remains within charter
and current on benchmarks).  "The world has passed you by,
events have overtaken you, you are therefore irrelevant and
should go away" should be as reasonable a criterion for shutting
down a WG as anything else we have... and your proposal won't
help with it at all.   If we really wanted to shut down the
unproductive, ineffective, and irrelevant, we would institute a
probationary period for WGs in which each new one got, say, a
year.  At the end of that time, it would automatically come up
for rechartering, would need to demonstrate that it was useful,
productive, and not consuming more resources than its likely
results justified.  If it could not make that demonstration, it
would disappear.  Similar "sunset" limits on WG Chairs, etc.,
might not be a bad idea either.  

Now, at one level, a proposal like that is complementary to what
you are proposing, not in conflict with it.  But, in both cases,
giving the ADs some explicit discretion seems to me to be more
appropriate than trying to impose a particular management
mechanism and style.  

> As for the IESG track record, you are kidding, right?  Do we
> have a solid pattern of wasteful, thrashing working groups
> that drag on, being disbanded?  I could have sworn we did not.

We do not.  That is a problem.  Indeed, to my mind, a serious
one.  But imposing a rigid set of mechanisms on the IESG won't,
IMO, fix it, _given the track record_.  Instead...

	* The track record predicts that they will simply ignore
	such rules if they don't like them.   Net effect: much
	wasted time, many hard feelings in the community.   Now
	the community could start recalling people for ignoring
	written rules, but we don't have any track record of
	that either (partially, IMO, because of the "big hammer"
	problem and partially because we have all observed that
	pointing out to the Nomcom that some particular AD
	routinely ignores the rules doesn't reliably predict to
	that AD's being retired).  (That is, of course, why
	"plan B" makes removal mandatory if an AD is recalled
	for ignoring certain types of rules.)
	
	* We further reduce the pool of possible ADs to
	including only those who like the management style we
	are trying to impose.

I'd rather the Nomcom judge ADs on effectiveness (of which
rule-following ought to be a part, but adherence to one
particular management strategy should be secondary).

> That leaves the IESG question to one of "they will do better".
> And that leads to the questions "why, how and when"?
> 
> Your suggestion requires no procedural changes.  So the IESG
> could have started taking this more stringent position
> anytime.  Yet they haven't.

And I suggest that your suggestion, if approved (and remember
that the IESG would need to approve it, so the discussion may be
a waste of time if the IESG doesn't like the idea), would
probably just be ignored by the same IESG, or the same ADs, who
aren't inclined to do it today.

> Your question is particularly important given that any
> reasonable evaluation of the IETF's track record would say
> that, indeed, that is exactly what has been happening.
> 
> The idea is to change the IETF culture about the requirement,
> so that it is a community thing, rather than an IESG thing.
> The idea is to have the high bar for entrance be a shared
> value, with complete transparency.

And I believe in reasonably high bars for entrance _and_ in
performance/ effectiveness reviews and in sunset periods.  I
believe that the longer a WG hangs around, the more it should
need to do to justify its continued existence.  I believe  that
any IETF activity that is consuming resources should be required
to justify its continued existence in terms of the marginal
opportunity costs of those resources.  I just don't believe that
a rigid rule about what someone has to do before getting a BOF
or a WG --in minimum rules or in sequencing-- is going to help.  

Perhaps a partial example would be helpful in clarifying where I
think we disagree.  Suppose a group showed up tomorrow with a
clearly-defined problem, a smattering of experience IETF types
in its membership, and a theory about how they were going to
proceed.  Suppose the formation of the group came out of a
bar-BOF at some IETF meeting, or a discussion in the hall during
some conference or other non-IETF meeting.   And suppose they
think they can get something together and have it ready for
standardization in nine months.   I'd prefer to let them
approach an AD with a proposal and a "good enough" charter
draft, skip BOFs, go directly to a chartered WG with a minimum
of fuss, recruit more participants as part of Charter posting,
and go do their thing.  I'd like the AD to be able to say "ok,
I'll sign off on this given your promise that you can be
finished in nine months, but, if you are still around at the end
of month 12, I'm going to shut you down and you can start
justifying a more realistic group and schedule".   Now _that_
would reduce management and administrative time and investment.
Will we see it very often?  No, but we have seen a few very
close approximations.  And I would like to see those cases less
bogged down in bureaucracy rather than more so.

> JCK> 	* Make sure the IESG understands that they will have
> JCK> 	strong community backing for killing off WGs that don't
> JCK> 	appear to be functional and/or worth the resources they
> JCK> 	consume.
> 
> So, rather than put the affirmative burden on the group
> supposed to do the work you want to increase the
> responsibility on the IESG to perform a negative action. This
> seems like a very bad process design.

Nope.  The burden is on the group either way.  But groups rarely
kill themselves, nor do they generally conclude that they aren't
ready for whatever the next procedural step is.  The IESG is
going to need to make decisions either way ... unless one makes
the process completely mechanical so that the necessary steps
and actions are also treated as sufficient ones.

     john