On Feb 17, 2014, at 6:10 PM, Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > factotum This may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, but just in case you are serious, no, this is not what IETF "leaders" do, so the word isn't appropriate. That is, we are active participants in the community who are responsible for things like facilitating and evaluating the consensus process and deciding what work we are willing to do within our areas. There's a great deal more agency here than "factotum" implies. Really, the notion that leaders are bosses or controllers is mistaken. Even in organizations where leaders perform these roles, it's because the participants in the organization decide to follow them to a greater or lesser degree, not because they exert any actual control. The term for a person who uses coercion to establish control is "despot," not "leader." My personal experience as an IETF "leader" is that I listen to what people say, think about it, occasionally salt it with my own ideas, and then repeat it back, and people either agree and go along, or more often debate some more. So to my mind the right term for "leaders" in the context of the IETF would be agents provocateurs, but it would probably be misinterpreted by the media. :)