+1 AB ++++++++++++ On 1/30/2013, Dave Crocker wrote: I suspect it's not 'increasingly' but rather that it's always been extremely difficult... Let me suggest a different possibility for the challenge in this topic: We are a diverse community. Absent very, very strong consensus that a problem is serious enough to warrant a change, the community is not likely to line up automatically behind a proposal. We will always have some people who prefer no change and some who offer their different, favorite approaches, or and some who offer a zillion tweaks. In the aggregate, that makes for entropy, not consensus. What makes this process different from what we see in successful working groups? I think there are two things: 1. A wg has a committed core of participants who have agreed on a common goal. 2. A wg process is managed. On the average, proposals for IETF process change benefit from neither of these. Hence I suggest that a proposal needs to recruit a committed core /before/ going public, and the discussion needs classic group facilitation, in terms of tracking issues, maintaining focus, and pursuing consensus. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net