On Aug 3, 2019, at 20:48, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > I've seen situations in the > last few years in which a discussion occurs and decisions are > essentially made in a meeting and made with or without adequate > attention to the views of those who are not in the room. Sounds like you are describing BOFs. These can have the special characteristic that they are populated by people who are still learning about the subject at hand and therefore have to make decisions based on gut feeling. The emotional balance of the room tends to be more important in the end than technical arguments. (I have also seen discussions like this in established WGs as well. An interesting observation is that in such decision situations the room tends to be filled by more people than the regulars, which recreates the “I’m a tourist and still need to learn about this but I will still make the decision for you” effect that is so familiar from BOFs.) As with consensus judging in general, this is mitigated significantly by the leadership (ADs for BOFs, WG chairs for WG decisions) applying some merit-based weighting of opinions witnessed. But the problem remains that we can’t start work or make important decisions that need more than 90 minutes of explanation before one can form an opinion. I don’t know how to fix this, as something like BOFs are a necessary threshold for establishing new work in the IETF, and F2F meeting is the only reasonable way to create emerging consensus that leads out of a contentious situation. But it is too *easy* (yes, I mean that!(*)) to prevent work, and this repeated observation is a significant dent in the otherwise quite high quality of output of the IETF. Grüße, Carsten (*) Of course, we already have way too much work on our plates. Some of which is managing the distortions created by prevented but ultimately necessary work. Or by wasting a lot of time preparing for these “at sea and in BOFs you are in god’s hands” events. Instead of miring new work in process until it suffocates and implodes by itself, we need to say “no” more often. We don’t have the criteria for that.
