Minutes of Dec 17/18 RFC Editor Futures Program

Eliot opened the meeting and we agenda bashed.
One item was added to the agenda- future meetings.

Issues 12 and 24 - Is the expert an advisor (RSA) vs an executive

editor (RSE) and what is the title of the role?

The chair noted consensus on several points-

• the person can raise issues to the strategic group
• the person does not make strategic decisions, but those are made by the
  strategic body
• the person does not direct the RPC/REP.

One question that opened up is whether this is one person or several
people to serve several disparate functions. In particular, the
concern was that if we bring in a publishing expert, would that person
also need to have a deep understanding of the community? We didn’t
close on that point.

There was some discussion of “pull” versus “push”, in which “pull”
means that the individual is consulted whereas “push” means the person
can take actions on his or her own initiative. A number of people
were more comfortable with pull over push. Others like both.

From the chat and also a bit on the mic there was some discussion
about what technical expertise would be required, such as knowing
which SVG profile to recommend.

One concern raised was how to write the SOW and how to assure that
enough time is devoted to the role. Jay spoke on this point, and
highlighted that it is not that much different from other roles.

We discussed some candidate text that can now be found at
https://github.com/intarchboard/rfced-future/blob/master/Issue12-RSE-role.md.
We agreed that this would be a starting point. Several people pointed
out that there needed to be more specificity, and that we should
review current responsibilities. That’s one of our next steps.

Issue 13/15: Board versus WG / Is group open to all?

We now have consensus that

• There is some strategic body

We think we have consensus that

• The RSE, stream managers, and a representative of the RPC are
  expected to participate in all meetings and in online discussions;
  and
• All strategic body meetings are open to the public, all discussions
  of issues take place on open mailing lists, and anyone is welcome to
  comment / discuss.

These two points are now being confirmed on list.

We then spent some time looking at the two models that have been
discussed:

• Board model
• WG model

We began considering how objections that have been raised in each case
could be overcome. For completeness, the text of what we discussed is
below:

This is a list of complaints that people made, that some people
believe, not consensus.

WG model

• Rough consensus can deadlock
  Is this a bug or a feature or both?
  Would any process help to resolve a concern about this?
• Diffused accountability
  Who do we point the finger at if things go wrong?
  Could we move from this mode to a board model if we really did deadlock?
• Weak RS[EA] could be problematic.
  How to measure series health?
• Not well suited for an area such as publishing that is outside our
  core competence of network engineering

Board model

• Not Community Driven
  Require some community expression of support/allow for objections
  for any board decision?
  Who gauges that support?
• Creates its own gravity – board members have to show success
• Only ex-officio participation?
• Ex-officio participation can make accountability difficult.

Both

• No deference is given to stream managers and publication expertise

There was some discussion of a hybrid model that has now continued on
list.

From the chat, there was a healthy discussion about the role of stream
managers in the final approval process, as well as how they might
choose to approve capabilities that they chose not to allow in their
streams.

We ran out of time.

Next Meeting

We doodled.

AOB

We’re going to need an editor soon.