Re: Common sense, process, and the nature of change

Ted,

On 11/8/2012 2:46 PM, Ted Hardie wrote:
>       why is that we seem now to have more process
> and less reliance on common sense?
...
>    Thinking a bit about the directions that conversation took, I think
> there is both a relatively simple answer to Andrew's question and a
> much larger piece of context that need to be teased out of the
> discussion.  The relatively simple answer is that we don't just use
> common sense any more because we don't want to trust individuals as
> much as we used to.
And the decisions have dramatically larger effects.

And those making the decisions are held dramatically more accountable.

And the IETF community is dramatically more diverse, which means far 
less shared culture about process.
And...

And...



>   That lack of trust isn't directed at the current
> IESG, IAOC,  or IAB, but at future incumbents.
This assessment has what empirical basis?

Quite a few appealing alternative theories could be postulated.  I hope 
that selecting among them is subject to more analysis than a popularity 
contest of subjective feel.  ("It's the answer because we all decide it 
feels right.")

>     We have come to the
> idea that allowing a current set of office-holders to make ad hoc
> decisions implies that all later incumbents will share that ability.
This is a rather existential community.  Most of our behaviors here 
pertain to the present, including present actors.
But really, Ted, where does your idea come from, that the issues with 
our current operation hang on some amorphous concern about unspecified, 
future actors, rather than some set of our current actors?

> I think that's where the larger context comes in.  The IETF is not
> simply an engineering organization, it is a mission-based
> organization.  Our mission is to make the Internet work and grow.
We like to utter phrases like that.  They are nice phrases about goals 
that no one could reasonably object to.
However they actually have essentially nothing to do with the concrete 
technical work we do here, except to the extent we pay engineering 
attention to scaling.
In fact, lofty, abstract goals such as you cite almost certainly 
distract us from the pragmatics that we have the skills to attend to.
But feel free to cite specifics that distinguish between what we (would) 
do merely as an engineering organization, versus what we (actually?) do 
as an organization to make the Internet grow.

> Belief in that mission is something built into the context of the
> IETF, and it is part of what helps each of us guide our decisions
> here.  Where some SDOs get compromises entirely by horse-trading, many
> of the compromises that let the IETF work by rough consensus actually
> come about because of that shared mission.
Oh?  It isn't because, for example, we simply worry more about 
engineering quality?  (When we actually do worry about it...)

>  We recognize that
> compromise to get interoperability is a key part of what lets the
> Internet continue to work and grow.
Whereas most of the IETF engineering discussions about compromise that 
I've participated in were in terms of what it will take to make things 
work.  You know, the sort of thing engineers worry about.  There are 
actually rather few marketing discussions about growing the Internet, 
during these engineering compromise discussions.

> The other thing that context suggests is probably equally important.
> As a mission-based organization, we have a natural touchstone for
> evaluating change.  If a proposed change furthers the mission of the
> organization, we can likely manage the transition it implies, whatever
> the scale might be.  If it hinders the mission of the organization, it
> shouldn't be taken on however cheaply and easily it might be done.
I'd be interested to hear some examples of when this has been done, in 
and for the terms you cite, since I don't recall participating in any.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net