On Jun 24, 2011, at 11:21 AM, RJ Atkinson wrote:
Earlier, Paul Hoffman wrote, in part:
...the IESG just approved publication of X, even with
what appears to be a lack of consensus in the comments
on the ietf@ mailing list.
(some other text elided here.)
For a document such as this, why even ask for IETF consensus
if the IETF consensus doesn't matter?
(remaining text elided here.)
Next, as a reference, here is a boilerplate snippet from
a recent IETF Last Call:
The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
ietf at ietf.org mailing lists by 2011-07-21. Exceptionally, comments
may be sent to iesg at ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain
the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
The "IETF Consensus" matters, and I believe the IESG
did fully and properly consider that matter in the case
that appears to have driven your note.
There appears to be a confusion underlying your note.
Paul's assertion that public postings to the IETF Discussion
list are the only metric for "IETF Consensus" is NOT correct
-- and never has been in the past.
"IETF Consensus" includes ALL of the inputs that the IESG
receives about a document or issue that is put to IETF
Last Call. The Last Call announcement specifically says,
for example, that comments may be sent privately to the
IESG.
Consensus inputs are NOT limited to posted public comments,
I agree with this much: IESG, at least, should be able to consider private
comments about document and standards actions, as input to its determinations.
But one of the important attributes of consensus, one of the things that makes
it so powerful, is that ideally, it's visible to everyone. Take the example
where a bunch of people in a room are asked a question and asked to raise hands
to indicate yea or nay. If only one or two people express a particular
opinion, they can each see that for themselves, and that the "rough consensus"
is clearly against them. Likewise, the other participants will be able to see
that the rough consensus is on their side of things.
On a mailing list, it's a bit harder. But still, when the traffic is visible
to all list participants, it isn't too hard to know whether your opinion is
widely supported, or whether you're part of a small minority.
In my experience, private input to IESG is more valuable in helping the IESG
deal with technical evaluation or other concerns, than with consensus
determination. At least when I was on IESG, the volume of private Last Call
responses was fairly small and I don't recall a case when I thought it would
affect a determination of community wide consensus. But private input was
occasionally quite valuable in other ways.
While I do think that IESG should be able to consider private input in
consensus determination, from a process standpoint it's problematic. If the
IESG decision doesn't reflect the visible consensus or lack thereof, this quite
properly raises a question as to whether IESG has properly evaluated consensus.
So in the event that there were a substantial amount of private input, IESG
would do well to find a way to make it clear to the public that is conclusions
were based on that input, in what way, and for what reasons.
In this particular case I don't see any reason to believe that IESG has
received a substantial amount of private input. e.g. I didn't see any mention
of such input in the IESG writeup or the IESG members' comments.
Keith
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