The properties of this sort of democratic process are well-known and
well-understood. As any student of the Soviet Union will tell you,
this is precisely how the Old Guard maintained control of the CP.
The question comes down to "why are you attending an IETF meeting?"
I attend the meetings to accomplish things that we could not
accomplish on the mailing list. That usually means trying to sit down
with a group of very active participants that have failed to come to
consensus on serious technical issues. The reality is that I can sit
down with 6 or 8 individuals and usually hash out a consensus because
the feedback loop is rather tight. However, take those same 6 or 8
individuals and surround them by 150 individuals who just want to
watch and the dynamics now change completely. Instead of the tight
feedback loop of free flowing ideas we now get a line of people at a
microphone speaking in turn while filtering their thoughts so they are
appropriate for the masses who may not have a deep understanding of
the issues. In all of this we are interrupted by non-participants
(defined as those that do not participate on the mailing list and who
never will) that throw in extraneous questions or suggestions that
make no sense in the given context.
The end result is that work does not get done in the working group
meeting. Instead, when does the work get done? By breaking the IETF
rules and having informal private meetings in the hallways or over a
beer at the bar. The working group sessions then become a bunch of
reports of "there was an issue on the mailing list, and we've come to
a consensus." In other words, the working group meetings themselves
are no longer work sessions and can be nothing more than a series of
presentations and q&a sessions.
I go to IETF to work in person with the people on the mailing lists
for the groups that I participate in, and to ensure that other groups
that attempt to apply those technologies do so in the proper way.
If you want to know what a working group is doing, spend the meeting
time reading the drafts. Don't just go to the meeting. If you are
going to go to the meeting be prepared to speak. If you can't speak
to the subject, don't go to the meeting.
Jeffrey Altman * Sr.Software Designer C-Kermit 7.1 Alpha available
The Kermit Project @ Columbia University includes Secure Telnet and FTP
http://www.kermit-project.org/ using Kerberos, SRP, and
kermit-support(_at_)kermit-project(_dot_)org OpenSSL. SSH soon to
follow.