Hi John,
At 03:21 PM 27-09-2019, John C Klensin wrote:
Others have commented about part of this. Your line of
reasoning above essentially makes a call for community comments
useless because someone (or a committee, board, or other group)
can always say "we made a proposal, there wasn't very clear and
obvious support for something else, and therefore we are going
with our proposal". A few years ago I would have argued this
was unnecessary, but it may be time that the IETF considers a
rule that, if a proposal originates with a given body, that body
is not allowed to be the determiner of consensus on that
proposal or alternatives to it.
I am not commenting about the line of reasoning as I switched to
other stuff instead of paying attention to the thread. I'll comment
on the call for comments aspect instead. It could be classified as a
public consultation. There is usually low engagement from the public
if the consultation is not viewed as useful or if there is a
perception that the consultation is being used to gain automatic
approval. The consequences is that it becomes very difficult to
identify problems which the committee or board did not think about or
devise solutions which will have some positive impact. At some
point, it can create a disconnect between the committee or board, and
the public.
It is not pleasant to receive (negative) criticism. However, it is
better for an entity not to prohibit that, whether it is directly or
indirectly, if it wishes to be open to public scrutiny.
It is rather unfortunate that the IESG has been unable to steer the
various discussions over the years. I'll take that into
consideration in saying that I would not blame a Security Area
Director for an action which he/she took. My guess is that there is
some backend messaging which lead to that.
On a somewhat unrelated note, it is likely that there is a a rift in
the community since around 2017. It is not possible to tackle that
as long as there are entrenched views on either side.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
