Hi, John,
From: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com>
--On Thursday, 31 May, 2007 14:33 -0500 Spencer Dawkins
<spencer(_at_)mcsr-labs(_dot_)org> wrote:
So, for reasons that both John and Lakshminath identified,
we've been asking WG chairs to encourage participants to
engage in public discussions, but to be receptive to private
requests for assistance on how to carry out those discussions.
The alternative - a WG chair who tells the working group that
the apparent WG consensus on the mailing list is being
overruled because of anonymous objections that the WG chair
cannot share with the WG, or because of private objections
that the WG chair is "channeling" from a back room - would
make voting seem reasonable (or, to use Mark Allman's
characterization in another thread, "seem charming").
But we have mechanisms for dealing with those kinds of problems.
Fully agree. I was thinking about preventing a problem, and you're correctly
pointing out that we have tools to deal with the problem if we can't prevent
it. Not that this sounds like fun, but you're quite correct.
... and continue fully agreeing, especially with
It is very clear that we have a system that is open to attack if
there are sufficiently many parties with sufficient malice.
Until and unless we start seeing lots of such attacks, it seems
to me that expecting good behavior and having ways to detect and
fix bad behavior should it occur is a much better path than
trying to invent rules that, inevitably, will be addressing the
last attack and not the next one and that will bog us down
further. I do believe that, if a decision is made that claims
to be based on consensus, but the consensus is not obvious from
public comments, the person making that decision has some
obligation to explain the decision and, clearly, "lots of people
whispered to me" should not be accepted as an explanation. I
also believe that, if that doesn't occur, appeals should be
initiated and upheld. But I'm having trouble seeing a real,
rather than theoretical, problem here that justifies new rules
or procedures.
Thanks,
Spencer
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