[arin-ppml] AC candidates

[Owen DeLong]

> On Oct 26, 2023, at 09:47, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 9:28 AM Andrew Dul <andrew.dul at quark.net> wrote:
>> On 10/26/2023 9:20 AM, William Herrin wrote:
>>> It plummeted after the Board changed the AC's role from shepherding
>>> policy proposals to developing policy proposals.
>> 
>> I realize that might be a distinction with out a difference, but I
>> wanted to point it out.
> 
> Shepherds guide folks through process. They don't edit proposals.
> Today's AC does much more of the latter than the former.
> 
> 
>> From a policy development perspective the AC's role has not changed
>> significantly in more than a decade.
> 
> I can still be sore about changes made a decade ago.
> 
> 
>> Should we disallow an AC member from submitting a policy proposal?
> 
> I don't think that's the problem. The AC members are some of the best
> informed folks around. It would be a waste to be unable to leverage
> their ideas. The problem is the next step where they get together and
> edit them privately. This is inherently exclusionary of everybody else
> and IMO is uncorrectable as long as the AC has the unilateral power to
> edit an author's proposal.

In my experience, the AC works very hard to remain true to the author’s
original intent and involve author(s) in the editorial process of a policy.
The AC is also extremely receptive to whatever community input is
available on a policy in most cases.

The only recent counterexample I can point to is efforts to wordsmith
a proposal that sought to redefine assignment and (slightly) expand the
definition of allocation. You and I both wanted to choose a new term,
Mr. Curran was very clearly opposed to doing so. The AC obviously
chose to weigh Mr. Curran’s guidance more heavily than ours.

At the end of the day, that’s not one of the hills I’m willing to die on.

I don’t take that as an indication that the AC is conspiring with Mr. Curran
behind my back. That debate was quite open and public.

I have seen the AC depart from the author(s)’ intent in the following
circumstances:

+	Significant community pressure to go in a different direction
+	The author becomes unresponsive or unwilling to accommodate
	community feedback

Otherwise, I’ve seen the AC work very hard to remain true to the author(s)’
original intent, even to the point of recognizing that editing a proposal would
be disingenuous and authoring a new proposal as an alternative rather than
override an existing proposal.

> What should be disallowed to AC members is:
> 
> 1. Editing proposals, except by the individual who authored it (which
> if an AC member should be only that individual).

I think this would be significantly more dysfunctional than the current
process, TBH. The most likely result would be the AC abandoning more
proposals and spinning up competing proposals as a workaround.

> 2. Private debate about proposals between AC members. Restrict the AC
> meetings to voting on proposals without debate or advocacy. Require
> the discussion and debate to happen on PPML.

ROFLMAO… This would not be an improvement of the process. This would
be chaos. You could sooner ban hallway discussions of proposals at the meetings.


Owen