Hi Lisa,
At 16:17 18-07-2008, Lisa Dusseault wrote:
Or tell me if you have these concerns, or bring specific issues up
publicly. It's too easy for guidelines to become rules, tools to
create de facto rules, principles to become restrictions, loose
consensus for specific cases to get applied as globally strong
consensus. Organizations like the IESG accrete rules no matter who's
in the IESG. Anybody play Fluxx? We need the rule reset card!
I'm surprised that you wrote that. :-)
Most forms of governance reach the stage you described above. Dave
posted a comment about whether the sorts of changes asked may be
symptomatic of an underlying disease. Is the situation so bad that
even common sense cannot prevail? Time will tell.
If I'm not mistaken, bodies like the IESG are not there to create
rules. It's the community that makes the rules based on
consensus. Quoting Dave Clark:
"We reject: kings, presidents and voting"
Somewhere along the way, that seems to have been forgotten. It's
easier to stick to the guidelines, let the tools dictate how I-Ds
should be written, live with the restrictions and follow the proclamations.
The case of example domain names was, as we've now noticed, one of
those incrementally developed rules. The activity of lots of people
avoiding non-2606 domains in lots of documents, a few case examples of
harm, then the ID-Nits document, led a bunch of us to believe that the
IETF had strong consensus not to use domain names except from 2606.
The discussion on this list as well as the IETF general list made us
realize there were exceptions.
Most I-Ds avoid using non-2606 domains. It's not because the authors
apply their common sense in those cases that it should be turned into
a rule. If an I-D goes through the process without having the domain
names changed, one has to believe that there is consensus for it to
be that way instead of a strong consensus not to use domain names
except from 2606.
I hope that the discussion on this list does not turn into a Boston Tea Party.
Regards,
-sm