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Re: Why ask for IETF Consensus on a WG document?

2011-06-24 07:21:22
On 2011-6-24 6:36, Paul Hoffman wrote:
Greetings again. The subject line is an honest question, not a gripe.

For those on the ietf@ mailing list, please 
see<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-to-historic/ballot/>. In 
short, the IESG just approved publication of draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-to-historic, even with what 
appears to be a lack of consensus in the comments on the ietf@ mailing list. One AD called it 
"pretty rough", but my quick count shows that it was not rough at all: there were 
more people on the ietf@ against this than in favor of it. If the consensus in a WG for a 
document was the same as we saw on ietf@ for this document, and the WG chair declared consensus 
anyway, there would be some serious talks with that WG AD about the chairs.

For a document such as this, why even ask for IETF consensus if the IETF 
consensus doesn't matter? There was a lot of good discussion and a fair number 
of varied objections to approval of the document. It sounds like the WG was 
strongly in favor of the document, which may be sufficient motivation to 
publish it, but the intermediate step of asking for IETF consensus and then not 
paying attention to the result then seems wasteful of IETF time.

If the IESG has a policy that "WG consensus trumps IETF consensus", that's fine, but it should be a 
stated policy so we know where to spend our time. If this document is special for some reason (for example, 
because it was about policy instead of being a protocol) and therefore the IESG measures consensus 
differently, that too is fine if we all know that ahead of time. Even a policy of "more than a dozen 
IETF regulars must object on ietf@ before we will consider overturning a WG" is fine, as long as it is a 
stated policy. If the IESG has a policy that says "the way we count in IETF Last Call is different than 
the way we expect Working Group chairs to count in WG Last call", that's fine as well. None of that is 
obvious from the ballot comments that are visible to the community, however.

Guidance from the IESG for our future participation in IETF Last Call 
discussions would be greatly appreciated. We try to save you folks time and 
effort; such guidance would return the favor to us.

--Paul Hoffman

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I maybe wrong but I mean no offensive.
IMO, the "consensus" is not only a matter of numbers.
For example, it's quite OK to move on if we got 6 against 4 by voting. But it's 
not good if we want
"consensus". Even there's only one individual who is against the draft, His(or 
her) opinion should
be considered carefully enough, as long as his(or her) suggestion matters.
But it's AD's job to decide whether the suggestion matters or not. If AD thinks 
that the problem does
not worth another discussion or the draft is OK with these flaws, then we move 
on. In this case, AD
do(and should) have this power.

--Yang C Sijes


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