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RE: Re: next steps on reviewing the appeal process



--On 22. september 2003 09:38 -0400 Margaret Wasserman <mrw@windriver.com> wrote:

This is all less clear, though, when dealing with technical or
document-related decision.  Two instances:

         KRE's appeal:  There was some public discussion about whether
                 or not to publish the addressing architecture document
                 while KRE's appeal was still pending.  And, if we had
                 published it, I still don't know what status it would
                 have been given (PS or DS)...  Was this explicitly
                 discussed by the IESG and a decision made one way or
                 the other?  If so, I wasn't aware of it.a

It was discussed in the IESG; if I remember it righly, we decided NOT to send a note to the RFC Editor requesting that publication be delayed, because if the appeal would have been upheld, it would be published as Proposed; if the appeal had been rejected, it would be published as Draft; in both cases, the document would be "standards track".
I don't remember if it mattered - I think the RFC Editor's queue was long enough at the time that the doc wasn't ready for publication until after the IESG had ruled - and I don't remember what the IAB did.

But my memory may be faulty; I'm pretty sure this decision was never announced publicly.

         Tony Hain's appeal:  Work was delayed because people didn't
                 know whether or not to act on the decision while an
                 appeal was still in process.  Even after Bob and I had
                 responded, we were getting significant push back from
                 people who didn't want to do work that would be thrown
                 out later, if Tony's appeal was upheld.  We were also
                 getting posts from people in the WG threatening further
                 appeals if we took any action based on the decision
                 that was under appeal.

This one, I have no idea whatsoever on how to solve - especially the threats part. In this case, the IESG basically lost track of the appeal in the month of August (my doing); once we got back on the case, it could hardly be any quicker. (Tony's appeal to the IESG was filed on July 31).
I don't have a timeline for the AD's handling of the appeal, though.

I am a bit worried about another aspect, which is the transition of appeals handling from "public flogging" to "star chamber" - I remember the hearing the IAB ran on the Bill Simpson "you've stolen my ASCII art" appeal in Oslo in 1999, which basically consisted of the IAB asking for input, people lining up 10 deep at the mike to say (mostly politely) "Bill Simpson is a buffoon", and the IAB drawing the obvious conclusion.

While I'm sure this significantly reduced the attractiveness of filing appeals, it also made sure the process was visible to the public. And at this moment, we're not doing that.

No deep thoughts on this at the moment....

Harald