Re: Making Decisions in the IETF

Whow, a thread that triggers on one my rantable process opinions.
Is there no warning about what not to post to the list not to trigger
these ? 

Here we go:

I have seen "addressed" to be too often only more or less
(dis)satisfactory answers in the WG (mail or in-person) - but no
change in the work product.

I really think it would serve the later usefulness of our documents if
contentuous aspects are only called "addressed" if the issue is
reflected in the text of the RFC. In whatever shape or form is fit best
such as e.g.: worst case add a "Standardization considerations" appendix.

These days, it is NOT necessarily the most important aspect of 
adopting an RFC for a product to be interoperable on the wire, but
often even more so to understand context.

That even starts with completely benign, non-contentuous IESG
evaluation questions (not even discuss). IESG reviews are not
necessarily precise about whether the reviewers wants to just personally
be enlightened by an answer in email or whether the question asked
needs to be "addressed" in the draft itself. And in return, authors
lean on their own preference from "always avoid any text improvement
in the draft if you can fend of questions just with email answers"
over to "explain anything in the draft as long as there are questions".

Obviously if there really are contentions issues, especially technical ones,
the issue is even more relevant not to just be shoved under the table
in an email thread. 

I wasn't even allowed to have a simple statement like "for further
consideration of contentuous aspects of this specification that where
not accepted into the RFC, please refer to the latest draft, appendix foobar"
in the final RFC text.

IESG member statement: "Obviously everybody
interested in why/how the RFC sausage was made should already know this"
And of course most drafts do not even track such contentuous issue text
with it because typically the rough consensus party of an argument wants
to make sure no minority opinion ever gets better documented.

Cheers
    Toerless

On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 06:20:47PM -0700, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hi Nathanael, Ben,
> At 04:31 PM 22-07-2026, Nathanael Ritz wrote:
> > This statement is floating 5 paragraphs down in section 1, when it feels
> > to me like it is practically the central thesis.
> > 
> > Or maybe I am just sensitive to the fact that I have observed that many
> > times I've seen "addressed" as equivalent to "accommodated". Which
> > means these individuals refuse to concede any agreement on the first if
> > any particular objection they might have raised was not summarily
> > accommodated to their satisfaction.
> > 
> > From my observations, much time has been wasted while stuck around a
> > persistent loop based on this particular mode of disagreement.
> 
> I didn't comment about the "objection" angle.  Sometimes there is an issue
> on which participants initially disagree. There would be some discussion.
> An issue which was listed as "addressed" does not have to be discussed
> again.  I would read "accommodated" as there were concessions.  It may
> happen that a participant(s) has/have a strong opinion on the issue.  He/she
> may be unwilling to concede.  The discussion can go round in circles [1].
> The puzzle is about how to break the loop.
> 
> At 04:37 PM 22-07-2026, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> > I assume this refers to draft-nottnick-ietf-decisions?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > I'm not either Mark or Pete, but I would argue that we have at least one
> > worked example of the original guidance not working well
> > (draft-ietf-tls-mlkem) and it seems totally reasonable to use that as a
> > prompt to provide better guidance.
> 
> The example could be an outlier.  It could also be argued that it is a
> signal that there should be better guidance.
> 
> > I don't think your description of what you observed provides enough
> > information to be able to really answer the question.  It might indicate
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > something inappropriate, or it might just be a proxy for soliciting
> > objections and assesing support, and such a proxy is probably fine in the
> > absence of objections.
> 
> Let's assume that a person goes to a foreign place.  The person read about
> the place.  He/she sees something and interprets it based on what he/she
> knows.  The foreign place was the working group and the reading material was
> this draft.
> 
> > Are you proposing a change to the draft?
> 
> Not at the moment.
> 
> > I also think it would be helpful to give guidance to consensus callers on
> > how to convey the results of the decision to the group, e.g., what
> > information needs to be included, how to describe the decision process,
> > what tradeoffs and use-cases were weighed against each other.  IIRC it took
> > a significnat amount of time to produce summaries like
> > https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/2QHMMX9g5vpFJaeH0okj40N3WjQ/ but
> > I only remember ever getting positive feedback about having produced them.
> 
> You explained how the conclusion was reached.  The difficult part is
> figuring out how to balance the various views which were expressed.
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
> 
> 1. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/go-round-in-circles
> 

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