[rfc-i] On two committees

[Dave CROCKER]

On 12/1/2010 5:42 AM, Olaf Kolkman wrote:
>
> On Nov 30, 2010, at 9:18 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> The IAB definitely has an oversight role,
...
> Without debating (agreeing or disagreeing) your observation, I would urge to
> not try to reorganize the IAB through an RFC Editor model: If the IAB has an
> oversight responsibility then allow the IAB to organize that oversight.


Olaf,

The divide-and-conquer approach you note is appealing.  Anything that simplifies 
the current task is appealing.

However there are two problems with any effort at separating RSE (or RFC Editor) 
oversight/supervision from the definition of the RSE or RFC Editor:

1. The IAB chose to have an entirely open community discussion and (apparently) 
consensus process, rather than to present a set of specific IAB recommendations 
for community review.  That invites a particularly free-ranging process. 
Further, the details of oversight and supervision are intimately tied to the 
design choices of the rest of the RFC Editor model.  If there are specific 
preferences or decisions that the IAB has in this arena, it ought to supply them 
to the discussion list.  Simply telling the discussion group that a portion of 
the design space is outside of scope -- without also declaring what the choices 
for that portion of the space will be -- hinders the ability to explore the 
reasonableness of choices that /are/ within scope.

2.  Someone is going to apply for the job of RSE.  Asking someone to be 
comfortable getting hired without knowing anything about their reporting 
structure is likely to bias the population of folk who will apply.  Anything 
that smacks of "We don't know who you will be reporting to or what the nature of 
their supervision will be" could be rather off-putting.


d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net