> The only way to releive work is to distribute it, not concentrate it. False. You can also relieve work while keeping throughput constant by reducing overhead.
Distributing work often reduces throughput by creating more overhead. Only a few applications are embarassingly parallel - most do not scale well as the number of PEs is increased. > ADs often don't have the time to track all the WGs and can end up > holding docs unnecessarily as a result. And they're not uniquely privvy > to the concept of compromise or negotiation; their "power" should come > from technical expertise, which is distributed in the IETF, not from > fiat (I didn't see white smoke from the Nomcom). Just by doing their jobs, the ADs are inherently exposed to a wider range of issues than other IETF participants, probably including those in the IAB. Nobody else gets to concurrently see the problems that exist at every level of the protocol stack. > ADs are not the only ones who can look or work at mutliple layers; in > fact, their focus works against them in many cases in this regard. That's not "fact", that's just your conjecture. And my experience contradicts it. ADs tend to become less focused over time, while these days many individuals in IETF work only in a particular niche. Every AD sees considerably more documents from outside his area than inside. They don't review every document of course, but they do participate in discussions about every document. > And there are PLENTY of docs that need review that aren't standards track > that the IESG is just plain holding up. Generally, those docs need review because they will be viewed as standards or as conflicting with standards. And not surprisingly, working group and non-standards track documents have priority. Something that people seem to miss is that for any document that goes before IESG, only one AD has to review that document. The other ADs are free to say "no objection". Those who read the document do so because they believe that the document needs scrutiny, not because their jobs require them to do so. IESG people are more acutely aware of the potential for documents to create problems than most other IETF participants, so they're going to take time to review documents that seem to have the potential to create problems. To the extent that ADs can entrust those reviews to other people, they are able to do so and always have been able to do so. And this works well for small documents that only affect a particular niche. But for many documents there aren't many reviewers who have both the time/ energy and a sufficiently broad perspective to replace the AD's own review and to make the IESG's deadlines. Some of the documents I reviewed while on IESG took ten to twenty hours of intensive time to review - they were that long and complex and it required multiple passes to see whether the loose ends were tied up. IESG people get committment from their employers to support that work. Try saying to someone whose employer hasn't made that committment - not a student, but someone who is experienced and has a broad perspective, "I need you to take ten or twenty hours away from your day job to review this document, and I need your review by a week from this Thursday". How often do you think that will work? > If you can find a dozen or so people to stop > what they're doing and be ADs, you can certainly find more people who > will participate if they can do so at a lower level of commitment. No, it doesn't follow. > > The Apps area had a directorate for many years with the > > idea that some reviews could be offloaded to the directorate. It didn't > > work very well, because those people were busy too, and it was hard to > > find people who could reliably turn around a review of a difficult > > document in time for the IESG telechat. They could (and did!) review the > > short/easy/noncontroversial documents, but there aren't that many of > > them, and they're not the ones that take up all of an AD's time. > > OK, so we have ONE example where it didn't work. Let's throw it out. ;-) sure, let's ignore the evidence and depend on conjecture :) > The issue with "directorates" is that they turn into papal conclaves (to > reuse the allusion). They need to be more open, but they can work fine. Directorates can be structured however the ADs want them to be structured. We tried a variety of structures in Apps, including completely open groups focused in particular areas (messaging, directories, web). They were even less useful than the "papal conclave" style directorates that they replaced. > > (Aside: I really do think that a limit on the number of documents, > > and a page limit on normative technical specifications, might go a > > long way toward lessening AD workload and also helping WGs produce > > well-written specifications. But there would need to be some way of > > making exceptions, as there will be a few documents that really do > > need to be long.) > > Page limits are fine, but won't lessen the work, just the chunksize. which is why you need document limits also. > While I can't speak for all WGs, I can speak for the ones I participate > in more heavily, and they certainly never operate that myopically. What > DOES happen is that we solicit cross-area review, or send authors to > other WGs to present docs before the IESG review. If all WGs did frequent cross-area review, and documented that review, IESG's job would be much easier. In my experience, presenting docs before other WGs doesn't work as effectively. It requires a continuous dialogue. A problem with both approaches is that there's not always another WG to represent the area of concern - which is an artifact of our "everything has to be a working group" mentality. > Then the IESG says "did you take this to X?" - when we had years > earlier. years earlier isn't good enough. the Internet changes too frequently. > The other issue is more of "hey, *I* have a technical problem with this > doc", regardless of whether it has already had cross-area review and > consensus. In which case we end up trying to appease the AD to sate > their personal perspective, not the IETF or the Internet as a whole, and > often at the expense (not to the credit) of the broad vision of the > global Internet. I've seen two kinds of cases - one where the AD has a legitimate technical problem with the document, often a problem that isn't visible at the WG level because those people don't have a broad perspective (or because the WG has actively engaged in denial about that problem). I've also seen cases where an AD objected to a document on what appeared to be a mere whim, without stating technical reasons for doing so, or without brooking any kind of technical discussion. These days where the ADs comments are visible to anyone who wants to look at the document tracker, I suspect it's harder for an AD to get away with that - and there are more grounds for appeal when the AD does try that. But because there are often cases where an AD sees things that the narrowly-focused WG simply cannot see, I don't think we can dispense with AD review. And offhand I don't see how to build up a pool of reviewers who have that same level of perspective. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it probably does mean that we shouldn't depend on it. Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf