[rpd] Opposing the last call made on the review policy

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 3 Dec 2018, at 13:24, Daniel Yakmut wrote:

daniel,

> This clearly showed that the
> authors of the Review Policy do not care about any input from the 
> community.

the sentence above is unnecessary.  we understand this is an emotive 
subject, but please try to debate the issue(s), and not the person.


> From the last date of submission, it means nothing was considered by 
> the
> authors from input made in Dakar meeting.

that could be better re-written as:  we have confirmation that no 
changes were made to the policy, to accommodate any of the potential 
outcomes from dakar.

now, that’s not quite the same as saying they did not consider 
changes;  just that _no action_ was made on those considerations  ;-)   
but more on that below.


> This means the policy remained as is without any input or review for 
> over
> six months.

we have confirmation that this is correct.


> Making it stale and should have been dicarded.

this is incorrect.  policies can be unchanged for up to a year.  
sometimes, it takes a while to gather information, for 
presentation/action.


> Can I then conclude that the PDP Co-Chairs erred to have allowed the 
> policy
> come.up.for discussion in Tunisia.

no.  the co-chairs did not err in allowing discussion;  there is no 
break from the rules of the PDP.


i believe that, in the absence of changes to accommodate any outcomes 
from dakar, this should not have gone to last call.
there’s a very human understanding that:
# if something is broken, and
# if nothing changes to fix it, then
# the original thing can still considered broken
and i think that there are many people on the list that might simply 
have viewed the current version of the policy in this manner.


but, this all predicates that there _were_ actual outcomes in dakar.  
the policy did not get passed in dakar, but were there recommendations, 
or salient discussions on the mailing list, for the authors to address, 
that were not actioned?  because, if there _are_ material problems that 
were recorded and acknowledged (at least by the community) and not 
addressed, then sure, there’s no case for last call.  but if there 
were no material objections in dakar, and the policy was sent back just 
for more discussion, then who knows, perhaps the last call for this 
version is warranted.

here’s a different example - there was an update proposed to the 
SL-policy, and the co-chairs sent this back to the mailing list for more 
discussion.  there were no material objections (and, even though i 
posted a question about this, that’s _not_ an objection), and if this 
comes up for discussion again at the next meeting, it would be incorrect 
to say that simply because it’s unchanged, it can’t be considered 
for last call.  (please don’t detract in anything other than it being 
“unchanged”)

so, to those that are saying that there’s still a problem, can you 
please rather cite an example of an existing action/update/request that 
remains unanswered, instead of simply saying:  “i don’t agree”.  
because that’s something the co-chairs can work with.

—n.