Harald opines: > > re: 1/ Considering the level of participation in this discussion on the > > IETF list I do not see how one could assert that there was IETF > > consensus without an explicit discussion at an IETF plenary - I do not > > think that just issuing a last call (as envisioned by the Scenario C > > document) would be seen by about anyone as an adequate involvement of > > the community. > > I am not at all certain of that. In what way is 20 people arguing in front > of a thousand people in a room more "community involvement" than the same > 20 people arguing in front of a thousand people on a mailing list? because this way you are sure that the thousand people at least know what is going on and have a chance to express their view if they think things are going wrong (in person or on the list during last call) > Our tradition as IETF has been to declare that mailing list discussion is > the final arbiter of consensus. If we need to abandon that principle for > organizational matters, we leave ourselves in a situation where we can only > make significant decisions at 4-month intervals; that is a theoretically > defensible position, but sharply limits the scope of what we can hope to > accomplish in any given timeframe. I trust we will not be reorganizing at this level all that often - I think that adding or subtracting an area does not need a plenary session but changing the legal basis of the endeavor is a rather important step, one that should not be done on the basis of 10 people expressing their opinion on a list. i.e., I think some things are important enough to require the full measure of due diligence - this level of reorganization is an example as was the ravin discussion - waiting until the next face to face meeting for a public discussion does not seem to be too big a issue when we are talking about a change that (historically) comes around every 18 years. Scott _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf