Re: [hrpc] draft-irtf-hrpc-political - current determination regarding RG last call.

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 15, 2019, at 9:20 AM, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I concur partially with Eliot: i don't think this is about sides. I actually suspect that Niels and I agree to a fair extent about the political nature of standards development. My concern is not that but rather whether this document makes interesting/useful claims and whether it supports them with evidence. At present, it's not clear to me that it does so, or really even what point it is trying to make.

Another issue, which I think is leading to you phrasing it this way, is that what “political” means varies, and it’s important that the term not be used as if it has a single meaning.  Doing so muddies the communication.  Of course all of the meanings of politics are examples of what is described in the definition that’s given, but that’s not sufficient.   It would vastly improve the document if section two actually enumerated the various meanings of “political” and then if those meanings were used explicitly later in the document.

Examples:

political in effect: because things are a certain way, this affects politics
political in development: because there are competing interests, consensus is reached through politics
historically political: the status quo was arrived at through politics, but those politics are no longer relevant

etc.   I’m leaving it here because there was a really good enumeration of these issues earlier in the discussion, and that would probably be a better taxonomy than one I’d come up with here off the cuff.