Subject: [Iasa20] Smoking gun about me terminology / title concerns

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:18:54 -0500

Hi.

A number of comments have been made to the effect that my
concerns about confusion about titles are exaggerated and,
essentially, that everyone understands the titles and issues and
no one (internally or externally) is going to be confused.  I
found an example early this week of part of the problem.  With
the understanding that this is definitely not her fault but the
fault of the IASA 2.0 process and decisions, Alexa sent a
reminder message about the IETF 103 survey on Tuesday.  She
signed it as below.  Note, not "Managing Director, IETF
Secretariat" or "Managing Director of the IETF Secretariat", but
"IETF Managing Director".  That is an entirely reasonable
transition from "IETF Executive Director" and avoids the other
two, which are a real mouthful.  

However, "IETF Managing Director", even more than "IETF
Executive Director" implies that she is managing the IETF.  I
sometimes think we would be better off if she and her colleagues
were allowed to do more of that, but it certainly wasn't the
intent.

The observation that "Managing Director" normally means slightly
different things in the US versus, e.g., much of Europe, doesn't
help.

These things matter.  If we don't get them right (or explain
them carefully), we confuse outsiders, ourselves, and/or our
support organization.

    john

--On Tuesday, November 27, 2018 16:52 -0800 Alexa Morris
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> Alexa Morris
> IETF Managing Director

---

From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:22:25 -0500

> them carefully), we confuse outsiders, ourselves, and/or our

I don't think this matters.

> --
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
e: [email-masked], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10  1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2018 00:46:40 +0000

Hiya,

On 01/12/2018 00:18, John C Klensin wrote:
> no one (internally or externally) is going to be confused.  

My own reason for not engaging in recent threads differs, but
uses the same words: I think this stuff is very confusing but
that that does not matter.

> them carefully), we confuse outsiders, ourselves, and/or our

I guess yeah, you could have a possible point there. OTOH, there
is so much of the IETF that is confusing, (what is the standards
process anyway?;-), I'm not sure that Alexa's job title (in IETF,
not AMS, nomenclature) is a deal. I'd say let's fire ahead and
deal with confusion as it arises maybe?

And FWIW: I have no fear at all that AMS people will try to
inflate their role names/job titles into more than those were
intended to indicate. I also have no fear that an incoming LLC
board will get away with such role-inflation if they tried, as
many eyeballs will be watching out for just that kind of thing.

In saying that, I do recognise that some previous secretariat
arrangements weren't as good as now. My hope is that holding our
LLC board members' feet to the fire (via the transparency and
accountability mechanisms discussed in this wG) is our way of
avoiding repetition of that.

Cheers,
S.

PS: As devil's advocate: I bet the AMS folks could totally
get away with a power-grab if they were arsed, but I'm also
quite sure they'd not bother - they are very good at caring
about us without caring so much about what we care about too
much:-)

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 20:11:28 -0500

I do trust the current folks we have from AMS.

Having said that, having a structure which makes staff power collection 
easy, and titles which make it harder to understand when that is 
happening, does not stand us in good stead.

Even with the best of will, there may be changes either in the specific 
staff provided by AMS or in the organization we use for the function. 
Given taht we have history of problems in this area, and that other 
several organization around us have had problems in this regard, doing 
what we can is important.

The WG declined to take any steps in terms of structuring to help avoid 
this.

I guess the working group will also choose to ignore John's concerns.  I 
happen to think that they are relevant concerns.

Yours,
Joel

On 11/30/18 7:46 PM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> iasa20 mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iasa20
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2018 15:37:17 +1300

> that that does not matter.

Interesting. There's a discussion going on right now in 6MAN
about why "Link-Scoped Unicast" and "Link-Local Unicast" are
both used to mean the same thing. I think it's not confusing and
doesn't matter, but some other people disagree.

The term that started this topic ("IETF Executive Director") has
been used at different times to mean different things, *none of
which* mean "This person gives executive directions to the IETF". 

<!-- Jokes about IETF Executive Cat Herder go here. -->

So if precise terminology matters in IANA registries, why doesn't
it matter in our new batch of IASA documents, so that there is a
solid basis for any future discussions?

(As for who has what on their business cards and in their email
signatures, that's very low on my priority list until after we've
got our documents consistent and stable.)

     Brian