Subject: draft-secretaries-good-practice - Current Issues for Discussion (Was RE: Chairs, please review ... <draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt>)

From: "Daniel King" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 21:17:04 +0100

Hi All,

Full disclosure, I am a co-author of draft-secretaries-good-practice (I-D)
in question.

Having watched the discussion unfold I would like to try and bring some
order to the discourse. There are a number of issues being discussed,
perhaps we might try to separate them and where possible find (rough)
consensus? 

1. Usefulness of draft-secretaries-good-practices I-D?

The thread seems to have generated more positives than negatives for the
information the I-D provides. Speaking from personal experience (as a
secretary) I would have found the information invaluable when starting out,
hence why we wrote the I-D. This was echoed by other secretaries so clearly
there is a need for the content. 

2. Should the I-D be Informational or a BCP?

Personally, I have no strong opinion either way. The role of WG secretary
has evolved in recent years, therefore it did not seem unreasonable to
reflect the changes and update the 2418 secretary description  (including
"The secretarial function encompasses document editing."). Furthermore, who
exactly decides on the need for a WG secretary and who appoints WG
secretaries (if they are wanted) was not clear in 2418, thus our I-D
provides additional clarification where it is needed. 

The contentious issue seems to be the scope of the 2418 update, would the
additional text below address those concerns?

"This section updates RFC 2418 by updating the definition of a working group
secretary. The remainder of this document is informative and does not
constitute a normative description of the roles of or requirements on
working group secretaries. Nothing in this document should be interpreted as
changing the rules under which working group chairs run IETF working
groups."

Those that proclaim this I-D "must not tell me how to run my WG" or "says I
must have a secretary" should note this was absolutely not our intention,
and I would argue the I-D does not make these assertions so please read the
I-D and provide pointers to sections/text that state this, and we will
address any ambiguous text. 

3. Should the I-D become a Wiki?

Yes. However, it would be valuable to gain IETF consensus on the starting
text for said wiki and the way we do that is by last calling an I-D and
publishing it as an RFC. If there is future support for moving this to a
wiki, then I would not see the other authors and contributors opposing this.

A final request, it would be good to split replies into context/item
specific (assuming I captured the salient points) discussion by utilising a
well-known but often overlooked efficiency tool available to secretaries and
chairs alike, AKA the "subject line". ;-)

Br, Dan.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 12:52:13 -0800

On 6/16/14 12:17 PM, Daniel King wrote:
> secretary) I would have found the information invaluable when starting
> out, hence why we wrote the I-D. This was echoed by other secretaries so
> clearly there is a need for the content.

I think my concern is less about the document than about the
role it describes.  If indeed the secretary role has evolved
to this extent I think we've got a chairing problem.  This is
not your problem to solve, clearly, but I am quite concerned
that we're adding institutional layers and getting yet more
bogged down in process.  That is to say, it seems to me that
publishing this document appears to be a workaround with respect
to a core problem rather than a solution to a problem.

I don't understand why what's being described is preferable to
adding a co-chair (or firing an underperforming chair).

I'd rather not see this published at all, but instead see a
discussion of secretarial roles on the chairs' wiki.

Melinda