This thread brought up many good points but I would like to add one more that
Lisa Dusseault made very clearly years ago. That is consensus is measured at a
point of time. Many ideas start with people hating them and as people learn
more, they may come to like them even thought the idea did not change. Or
perhaps the deployment environment changed. The important point is that the
results of consensus calls made in the past may or may not have much bearing on
the current IETF consensus. I see IETF LC as a clear point where consensus can
be measures before the IESG makes a decision. Most documents have very clear
consensus by the time they reach IETF LC. For the ones that are not, every WG
member is welcome to send comments to IETF LC, if they care - some times they
do, mostly they do not.
It's very hard to define consensus and I actually think it is better if we
don't strive for a formal definition of it. As with many of the best things in
life, most of us know it when we see it. The words rough consensus certainly
mean to me a lot more than half of the of the informed people. I do not believe
that silence can be read as consensus support for a position - it is simply
silence - it is not in favor or again. However each chair or AD judging rough
consensus chooses to define it for themselves, I hope the definition results in
an environment where a document can be progresses by a small group of the
willing and only stopped by the outrage of the masses. WIthout that, the
willing will simply find a better place to work. And with that, I'm off to read
the WHATWG list.
Cullen
On Jun 23, 2011, at 4:36 PM, 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
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf