Subject: [Pesci-discuss] PESCI, WGs and the consensus process

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:35:44 -0700

In the starkest terms I can think of, my thought on the WG/team/process 
change is:

- Getting consensus in the IETF for reasonably deep changes has SUCCEEDED - 
see the IASA work, painful as it was.

- Getting consensus in a WG (which gathers together many of the people who 
find process work interesting, and scares away quite a few of the people 
who want to get other work done) has FAILED (see the second PROBLEM WG RFC).

(While NOMCOM and IPR are sometimes quoted as "successes", I want to point 
out that both groups had "no basic changes" results.)

Getting public input into a process is essential to making that process' 
results be acceptable to the IETF. So public discussion lists like this are 
important - and topic-specific discussion lists like this limit the impact 
of the discussion on other things the IETF needs done (like discussion of 
venue selection criteria...?)

A point that distinguished the success from the failure above seems to be 
the requirement that one needs to find *consensus* within the smaller 
mailing list. A design team can say "we have received input, some of which 
is reflected here, some of which we disagree with" - and go straight to the 
whole IETF and ask for their consensus (either ask for consensus that the 
solutoin is right, or ask for consensus that the IETF should consent to 
letting the stuff go ahead - these are subtly different.....)

I think relatively drastic changes to the IETF are needed. I'd like to find 
a path where those changes are possible. In finite time.

                Harald

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From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:03:19 -0400

And so my question:  why is this different for PESCI?

(Why) is it not applicable for MARID?

And, if you see a distinction, come back and make sure the
PESCI list doesn't fall into being treated as, or thinking
it is, a WG.

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> A point that distinguished the success from the failure above seems to 
> be the requirement that one needs to find *consensus* within the smaller 
> mailing list. A design team can say "we have received input, some of 
> which is reflected here, some of which we disagree with" - and go 
> straight to the whole IETF and ask for their consensus (either ask for 
> consensus that the solutoin is right, or ask for consensus that the IETF 
> should consent to letting the stuff go ahead - these are subtly 
> different.....)

Leslie.

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 06:03:12 -0700

> (Why) is it not applicable for MARID?

It might be. They certainly share the distinction of having failed to work 
out the problem in a WG.
At one point I thought that was what the DEA Directorate was supposed to 
be, but I haven't seen much from it, so I'm not sure what the theory of 
what it's supposed to accomplish is at the moment.

> PESCI list doesn't fall into being treated as, or thinking

There is one distinction.....

The theory of WGs is that it allows the people who have expertise to 
contribute to get together, while the people who don't have expertise to 
contribute can go do something else until it's result review time.

The subject of spam concerns directly everyone who uses email, and even 
more directly everyone who runs, develops or designs email systems.
The first group is significantly larger than the IETF; the second group has 
an overlap with the IETF, but the size of the overlap is debatable. 
Certainly MARID included a number of "old-time IETFers" as well as a number 
of people who hadn't been active in the IETF before.

In contrast:

The subject of how to run the IETF concerns directly everyone who *works* 
in the IETF - which is by definition, more or less, identical to the IETF 
community.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this difference, but it *is* a 
difference.

                    Harald