Re: RFC 3929 on Alternative Decision Making Processes for Consensus-Blocked Decisions in the IETF (fwd)

Matthew Elvey <[email protected]> wrote:
> 1)This scheme would put excessive power in the hands of the few: the 
> Chairs, who are appointed (indirectly) by the elite few who can pay 
> non-trivial sums of money to attend lots of IETF meetings, such sums 
> generally provided by large corporations with entrenched interests.

  Even if what Andrew said wasn't true, how do you propose to fix
this?  I don't want to discuss that here, as other lists are more
appropriate.  But if you're tearing down the existing system without
proposing a new one, that's no way to move forward.

> 2)A major failure of , e.g. the MARID WG (including the Chairs) was the 
> failure to encourage/require a cost (in the broadest sense of the term) 
> analysis of the proposals. 

  IMHO the failure to a acheive consensus was guaranteed once the
consensus was to look at RFC 2822 identities.

> 3)The author fails to adequately consider the benefits of 
> experimentation: continued experimentation and discussion is removed as 
> an option.

  .... as part of the IETF process.  Nothing prevents anyone from
experimenting and discussing outside of the IETF.

> 4)In general, where there are competing proposals, instead of 3929, 
> there should be a push for documents providing things such as pros and 
> cons, cost-benefit analyses, rationale, and context that will help 
> inform the membership and lead to consensus. 

  Such documents will simply move the failure to acheive consensus to
a different position in the process.  Witness the "SPF is cheap to
deploy", versus "no, SPF is expensive to deploy" arguments.

> 3929 seems to assume that a failure to reach a rough consensus must
> mean there's a problem in the process, when in fact it could be in
> the proposals.

  It's the same thing.  The process didn't empower participants to
discover problems in the proposals.  Why that happened is another
story.

  Alan DeKok.