Re: draft-klensin-overload-00.txt

[Scott W Brim <swb@employees.org>]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 06:03:46PM -0500, Spencer Dawkins allegedly wrote:
> -  Kill two working groups for every working group created in an area,
>    until the number of working groups in the area has fallen by 25%.

> There are two things getting conflated here - how big does an area
> need to be, and how big the IESG needs to be (since all the ADs sit on
> the IESG).  I asked Harald about a month ago about pre-NOMCOMing ADs,
> so that the IESG has "bench strength" when the IETF creates a
> "temporary area", or an AD steps down (or simply dies while in
> office), and Harald said the IESG was too big for his tastes today.
> 
> Have we ever found a way to solve a problem like this, that didn't
> involve inserting a level of hierarchy/indirection?

We've been worried about the number of working groups since the concept
of working groups was created (somewhere around 1989).  One question is
how big we "need" to be (to cover the needs of our constituents), but
the other is how big can we get without losing effectiveness.