Re: Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-hardie-wg-stuckees-00.txt

[Ted Hardie <hardie@qualcomm.com>]

Hi Hilarie,
        Thanks for you comments.  A few responses.

At 07:43 PM 2/20/2003 -0700, The Purple Streak, Hilarie Orman wrote:
> The way it's written it sound like too much stick and not enough
> carrot.  How about having stuckee status be an award conferred by the
> chairs, based on contributions?  Keep the list on the web page.  That
> is, if chairs really want to do this much record keeping, policy
> setting, and enforcement.
You're right; this is practically all stick.  The only real carrot
is getting the work for the working group done.  I can see adding
carrots (mention on a web page or in documents), but I
really want to avoid this slipping into a "membership"
class with rights and privileges beyond those of the usual
working group participant.  This is probably particularly
sensitive for me, as that was the language I originally
used to describe it, and the niggle their kept me from
putting the idea out there more widely.

> Item 10 seems very controversial.  Even if there are many informed
> technical people supporting something, if the stuckees are divided
> or ambivalent or uninterested, then the item cannot be considered a
> consensus.  This seems too severe.
I see the problem.   I'm really trying to get at the other
end of the spectrum, where there aren't enough informed
technical people saying anything.  I'll see if I can tweak
the language a bit.

> But, despite all the mechanism, I'm not sure what the advantage is
> over having the chairs say, as they often do, "if no one is interested
> enough in this work to comment on it, then we will seek dissolution of
> the WG".  The stuckee method is just a very complicated way of getting
> at the same idea ("the number of stuckees has fallen below the minimum
> level for WG").
It isn't very different.  The only real difference is that the role may be
just formal enough for people to actually be able to gauge the level
of effort a bit better.  I know lots of well intentioned folk who agree
that a particular work item would be valuable, but gauge poorly the work
*they* need to put in to see it happen.  This provides a potential
method to help them gauge that (by setting out what they will
do and on what time schedule) and to help those managing the
effort know that they have at least N folks willing to make actual
assertions about the quality of the work.

Not a revolution, by any means; just a way of formalizing a role
that is already there.
                        regards,
                                Ted Hardie




> Hilarie