[ai-control] Re: -04 drafts for evaluation

[Suresh Krishnan <[e-mail]>]

Hi Jo,

> On Oct 31, 2025, at 12:03 AM, Jo Levy <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Suresh, 
> A 1 minute poll at an in-person meeting  which not everyone could attend should not be used to assess consensus. My understanding is that in person meetings aren’t part of the mailing list, which is the vehicle used to discuss and reach consensus. 
> 
> Also, as your post indicates, very few people voted in that poll. As I recall, for the one I was able to vote it, the poll was open for less 30 seconds. 

A poll is specifically not a vote. A poll in meetecho is simply a hybrid/remote friendly version of a hum. Please do take a look at RFC7282 (specifically section 4. for some background on humming). To quote from it

“ Quite often, a chair is faced with a room full of people who seem to be
   diametrically opposed on some choice facing the group.  In order to
   find a starting place for the conversation, it can be useful for the
   chair to ask for a hum to see if one of the choices already has a
   stronger base of support than the other (or any significant base of
   support at all, for that matter).”


> 
> I also don’t see the names or identities of those who voted. Was it anonymous? Assessing consensus on an anonymous poll seems inconsistent with  IETF policies.

The “hums” as in the polls *are intended* to be anonymous (we as chairs do not see the identities either). Again look at the reference I quoted above for some context (mainly that this is *not a vote*). The numbers do not matter, the fact that there are people objecting does.

> 
> Moreover, there was no consensus to change the original top level category from Text and Data Mining to “Automated Processing.” In fact,  I don’t believe the term “automated processing” was even discussed in this mailing list until after  it appeared in a new draft. 
> 
> The ability of the authors to insert new  provisions without any discussion or consensus amongst the mailing list, and then require consensus to remove it, turns the consensus model on its head. 
> 
> 
> 
> The original logic, as expressed by Paul Keller, was to create a carve out of Text and Data Mining for AI related uses—not to create a signal for blocking all of text and data mining and crawling, and not to recreate robots.txt.
> 
> Finally, there was no discussion, let alone consensus, of creating a preference signal for “bots”, once again untethered to AI in any way. 
> 
> Frankly, this type of selective reliance on the concept of “consensus” calls into question the integrity of this process.

Huh, what? Who said there was consensus on this text. I specifically wrote "As far as we can see we don’t see clear consensus either way, and this is something we need to resolve before the drafts can progress from the working group.”. Are you saying that you prefer the TDM definition from the -01 draft instead? 

Thanks
Suresh