--On Tuesday, 05 July, 2005 08:47 -0700 Bill Manning
<bmanning@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I don't believe that is true in this case, as long as RFC
>> 2780 is in force.
>> Especially since there is a clear path for Larry Roberts to
>> ask for IETF consensus, which by definition would overrule
>> the IESG.
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
> just for my edification, how is IETF consensus determined,
> esp. when there is a need to "overrule the IESG"? in other
> contexts, this type of thing is done by a vote of the
> membership,
> but last i checked, there are no members of the IETF.
As far as I can tell, there are only two ways:
(i) We ask the IESG if they think they have been
overruled. In the nasty and impolite old days, the
question was often stated at open plenaries, with at
least the possibility of [real or virtual] over-ripe
fruit moving through the air in the IESG's direction.
Today, when a larger percentage of the community seems
either inclined to suffer in silence or disinclined to
speak up, the message from the community probably needs
to be much more clear, and the consensus stronger, for
the IESG to reach that conclusion.
(ii) Someone appeals, essentially asking the IAB whether
the IESG has been overruled. The problem with this path
is that, in the last decade, the IAB has tended to be
deferential to the IESG's determinations about community
consensus. That determination is often hard to make,
the various procedural documents appear to assign the
job of making it to the IESG, and the IAB has tended to
want to look at procedural issues on appeals and to not
review the IESG's judgment calls.
Perhaps, in both cases, that is how we want it. If it is not,
perhaps this is the time to start making procedural changes.
But, in either case, the difficulties implied by the above are
the greatest part of what makes statements such as the last
clause in the IESG's rejection of the Roberts registration
request particularly troubling: if the IESG has already
concluded the community consensus is sufficiently unlikely that
they recommend against trying to obtain it, the amount of
consensus, and ways of demonstrating it, that would be needed to
get them to decide their conclusion was incorrect and they had
been overruled may set an impossibly high barrier.
john
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