Anonymity means that a cabal can block progress without being held accountable.
If you can't argue your case in public you should be asking why.
Sent from my GoodLink Wireless Handheld (www.good.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Lakshminath Dondeti [mailto:ldondeti@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:14 PM Pacific Standard Time
To: Michael Thomas
Cc: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; Brian E Carpenter; John C Klensin; IETF Discussion; Jeffrey Hutzelman
Subject: Re: consensus and anonymity
Excellent point about the disconnect between meeting room hums and
opinions on the lists.
But, I wonder why anonymity is an important requirement. The mailing
list verification has at least two properties that are more important to
the IETF: the archives provide for anyone to be able to verify the
consensus independent of the IETF hierarchy (chairs, ADs and whoever);
further the archives provide a means to verify the consistency of any
IETF participant, chairs or ADs at any given moment, candidates for WG
chair and I* positions, and anyone in general.
The IETF should be more transparent and allow at least a distributed
verification process and not a centralized hierarchical process.
Lakshminath
On 5/31/2007 10:22 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
>> The problem with consensus is how you decide to count the
>> undecideds/neutrals. In most cases of controversy there will be a
>> small group pro, a small group con and the bulk of the WG will be
>> somewhere inbetween. If the breakdown is 25%/25%/50% a biased chair
>> can effectively decide the outcome by choosing to interpret 'no
>> objection' as 'no support' or vice versa.
>>
> One thing that occurs to me is that there is usually a huge disconnect
> between
> the participation in hums at a meeting and the email equivalent on the
> working
> group list. I'd say that it's typically between one and two orders of
> magnitude
> at a meeting more hands/hums than on the list. And of course, on the
> list it's
> usually just a rehash of the same active participants with a few
> stragglers thrown
> in.
>
> Maybe part of the problem with the "official" consensus taking on the
> list is
> that it isn't sufficiently anonymous? It's pretty easy in a crowd to hum or
> put up your hand in a sea of others; on the list, it requires quite a
> bit more
> conviction. Apathy is the other likely reason, but there's not much we can
> do about that short of working group demolition derby videos or suchlike.
>
> So might having the ability to contact the chairs in private to register
> their
> preference be reasonable? I don't recall seeing this in any of the working
> groups I've participated in.
>
> Mike
>
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