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Re: When is a 3933 experiment necessary? [Was: Last Call: <draft-farrell-ft-03.txt> (A Fast-Track way to RFC with Running Code) to Experimental RFC]

2013-01-30 12:36:32


On 1/30/2013 1:15 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
    I do agree with
Spencer that getting consensus for a process change always looks like a
formidable task. Small changes never address enough of the problem or the right
piece of the problem. Large changes are too much in one go. :-) So, it seems to
be increasingly hard to make changes to our process.


I suspect it's not 'increasingly' but rather that it's always been extremely difficult...

Let me suggest a different possibility for the challenge in this topic:

We are a diverse community. Absent very, very strong consensus that a problem is serious enough to warrant a change, the community is not likely to line up automatically behind a proposal. We will always have some people who prefer no change and some who offer their different, favorite approaches, or and some who offer a zillion tweaks. In the aggregate, that makes for entropy, not consensus.

What makes this process different from what we see in successful working groups?

I think there are two things:

1. A wg has a committed core of participants who have agreed on a common goal.

   2. A wg process is managed.

On the average, proposals for IETF process change benefit from neither of these.

Hence I suggest that a proposal needs to recruit a committed core /before/ going public, and the discussion needs classic group facilitation, in terms of tracking issues, maintaining focus, and pursuing consensus.

d/

--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net