On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net>
wrote:
On 6/11/2013 5:25 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
We want understanding, of course, but I think requiring Russ to
demonstrate that by writing a paragraph or six on the finer points of
the proposal would be daft.
That's the problem with special-case exceptions, such as requiring less
work by an august personage. It reduces to a cult of personality and it
doesn't scale. For an organizational culture of the type the IETF
expresses, that doesn't fit. The opinions of people IETF management
positions are not supposed to automatically have more weight in determining
the specifics of our specifications; they are supposed to make their case,
just like everyone else.
We try to distinguish between comment when wearing a formal IETF hat
versus without a hat. So it's not the IETF Chair making the comment, it's
"merely" a well-known personage.
It's easy to give special rights to such folk, such as not requiring them
to offer the substance behind their statement, but it actually has a pretty
insidious effect. It's gets us used to pro-forma postings; it gets us
relying on a few folk to sway things; it gets us to count rather than think.
Ah, sorry, that's not what I meant - I included Russ's name purely because
he was the original exemplar, not because he's special in any particular
way.
I meant that requiring anyone to demonstrate understand of the draft by
jumping through hoops would, ipso facto, require them to jump through hoops.
If the politicking is from multiple organizations who all want to
implement and deploy, then I'm all in favour...
Pete Resnick has been working on a careful formulation of what the IETF
means when it talks about 'rough consensus'. My own interpretation of what
he's developing -- and I want to stress this is me speaking, not me
speaking for Pete -- is that consensus is a combination of both numbers and
substance. The mere fact that "almost everyone" is in favor of something
can't be enough. What is also required is that the arguments of objectors
must have inadequately persuasive substance. One voice with a really solid
concern, which withstands independent review, needs to be able to upset an
overwhelming agreement.
So no, the fact that the politicking is from multiple organizations needs
to be insufficient.
Again, I think you're misunderstanding me - I meant (somewhat facetiously)
I'm in favour of the politicking, not that I think that it should carry the
day automatically. If there are unanswered objections, that should indeed
count against. More generally, in the case of the XSF's small set of
questions, if people answer the last call with one-word answers to those
and nothing further, this gives that community sufficient information to
gauge whether to advance a proposal along the standards track there - in
other words, given a fairly minimal bar, any engagement meeting that bar is
valuable.
That bar has to be high enough to carry more than the single bit of
information Russ's note carried on its own, though, but it also needs to be
low enough that it won't prove a barrier to response.
I think the XSF's questions are close to the right level (I think the XSF
could, if it wanted, tweak these and improve them after this number of
years); I don't think it would be very hard to find some similarly
reasonable start point for the IETF.
Dave.