Hi Matt,
This is so typical of the modern IETF -- 102 people were persuaded by handwaving arguments that "something bad might happen" if a new and useful technique were deployed, and they are being allowed to overwhelm the 20 who were willing to dig in and find and solve any real problems.
I do not believe that your characterization is fair in this case. The discussion was thoughtful and informative, and we did have several experts from different IETF areas involved, including application developers, operators, routing experts, DNS experts, etc. I do not believe that group consensus was unduly influenced by "handwaving arguments".
You didn't attend the meeting, and the minutes have not been published yet. You are typically a very reasonable person, and I am surprised at your willingness to characterize this meeting so negatively, without any good source of information regarding what actually happened...
How many of your 22 speakers had implementation and deployment experience to report?
The discussion of the appropriate usage of site-local addressing in IPv6 has been taking place for several years. There have been numerous discussions in many forums, including multiple WG meetings and several lengthy discussions (encompassing 1000's of messages) on the IPv6 mailing list. At least three internet-drafts have been published on this subject, including our current scoped addressing architecture, a draft that attempts to summarize the benefits and issues associated with site-locals, and two proposals to limit site-local addressing to specific usage cases.
Considerably more than 22 people have expressed an opinion on this subject in the last 8 months alone, and these people have included many people with real implementation and deployment experience, as well as a vast array of experts in different technology areas.
No active IPv6 WG participant (whether or not he attends IETF meetings) could credibly claim that he was unaware that this discussion was taking place, or that he has been denied an opportunity to voice his opinion on this subject (in-person, on the mailing list, or both). In fact, given the size and scope of this discussion, there are probably very few IETF participants who managed to miss the fact that this discussion has been taking place.
If you would like to express your technical opinion on the site-local issue, I would suggest that you take it to the IPv6 WG mailing list. I would be happy to continue a technical discussion with you on that list.
We will be publishing the minutes to the IPv6 meeting soon and checking all of the consensus points reached during our meetings on the IPv6 list shortly. Your input is definitely welcome.
Margaret