Subject: Re: APPEAL AGAINST IESG INACTION ETC. BY WILLIAM ALLEN SIMPSON

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 13:20:46 -0500

APPEAL AGAINST IESG INACTION ETC. BY WILLIAM ALLEN SIMPSON
dated 23 October 1999

This is the final text of the response given verbally
during the open plenary session of the 46th IETF.

The IAB has reviewed this appeal.  We note that an appeal was
made by Mr. Simpson covering the same general area and topics
some months ago, that a public hearing was held on them at the
previous (45th) IETF and that this appeal addresses some of the
same issues.  Plenary time is a scarce resource, and IAB and
IESG time only slightly less so.  The IAB is sensitive to the
risk of denial of service attacks on the community by repeated
appeals, and believes that second and subsequent members of a 
sequence of appeals should be held to a significantly higher 
standard of clarity and precision than an initial one might 
reasonably be.

Additionally we are not aware that this new appeal has been
duly considered and rejected by the IESG prior to being
brought to the IAB.

Consequently, the IAB has concluded that:

(i) Many of the issues raised were, as noted in the appeal
text, addressed in the appeal on which a hearing was held at
the 45th IETF and a decision announced by the IAB on 1 October
1999. The IAB will not review that decision under the
guise of a new appeal.

(ii) Some of the issues raised apparently involve a claim that
IESG failed to move immediately (or quickly enough to suit Mr.
Simpson) to make a decision, or to adequately explain the
decision, about documents covered by the previous appeal. The times
involved were actually very short (October 1 to 23, 1999). The IAB 
recognizes the many demands on the IESG's schedule in the last few 
weeks before an IETF meeting and the IESG's need to respond to 
overall community priorities, and will not second-guess the IESG's
decisions about those priorities during that period.  In
addition, the IESG has never been obligated to provide specific
rewrites to documents or otherwise to provide an essentially
line-by-line explanation of its objections to a document or
reasons for its decisions.  We do not believe that it would be
in the best interests of the community to try to force the IESG
to do so; in any event, a proposal for such a requirement
should be raised through procedural mechanisms, not via an
appeal.

(iii) The fraction of the appeal letter that appears to fall
into the above categories is sufficiently large that the IAB
has been unable to identify new issues of substance.  
Items 1 through 8 appear to be a rehash of items dealt
with in the previous appeal. Items 9 and 10 are ones that
we expect the IESG to deal with in a routine way and with
routine priority.

(iv) If there are in fact new issues of substance, it should be 
Mr. Simpson's responsibility to identify them.  If the IAB 
attempted to determine what new issues were actually being 
appealed, it would open itself and the community up to yet 
another appeal on its conclusions. Consequently, we are dismissing 
this latest appeal summarily. If there actually are issues of 
substance that have not been previously addressed, we are willing 
to examine them if we receive an appeal of well-defined, separate
new matters that have gone properly through the appeal sequence 
(i.e., have already been addressed and rejected by area 
directors, the IETF chair, and the IESG) and if that appeal addresses
only those new and substantive issues.

  Brian Carpenter
  IAB Chair
  January 11, 2000

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 13:20:46 -0500

Brian Carpenter
  IAB Chair
  January 11, 2000