Anonymity means that a cabal can block progress without being held accountable.
If you can't argue your case in public you should be asking why.
Sent from my GoodLink Wireless Handheld (www.good.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Lakshminath Dondeti [mailto:ldondeti(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com]
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:14 PM Pacific Standard Time
To: Michael Thomas
Cc: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; Brian E Carpenter; John C Klensin; IETF
Discussion; Jeffrey Hutzelman
Subject: Re: consensus and anonymity
Excellent point about the disconnect between meeting room hums and
opinions on the lists.
But, I wonder why anonymity is an important requirement. The mailing
list verification has at least two properties that are more important to
the IETF: the archives provide for anyone to be able to verify the
consensus independent of the IETF hierarchy (chairs, ADs and whoever);
further the archives provide a means to verify the consistency of any
IETF participant, chairs or ADs at any given moment, candidates for WG
chair and I* positions, and anyone in general.
The IETF should be more transparent and allow at least a distributed
verification process and not a centralized hierarchical process.
Lakshminath
On 5/31/2007 10:22 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
The problem with consensus is how you decide to count the
undecideds/neutrals. In most cases of controversy there will be a
small group pro, a small group con and the bulk of the WG will be
somewhere inbetween. If the breakdown is 25%/25%/50% a biased chair
can effectively decide the outcome by choosing to interpret 'no
objection' as 'no support' or vice versa.
One thing that occurs to me is that there is usually a huge disconnect
between
the participation in hums at a meeting and the email equivalent on the
working
group list. I'd say that it's typically between one and two orders of
magnitude
at a meeting more hands/hums than on the list. And of course, on the
list it's
usually just a rehash of the same active participants with a few
stragglers thrown
in.
Maybe part of the problem with the "official" consensus taking on the
list is
that it isn't sufficiently anonymous? It's pretty easy in a crowd to hum or
put up your hand in a sea of others; on the list, it requires quite a
bit more
conviction. Apathy is the other likely reason, but there's not much we can
do about that short of working group demolition derby videos or suchlike.
So might having the ability to contact the chairs in private to register
their
preference be reasonable? I don't recall seeing this in any of the working
groups I've participated in.
Mike
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