Re: how to contact the IETF

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 2/10/09 9:27 AM, "Andrew Sullivan" <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Sure.  But under such classical consensus decision-making, one knows
> who's in "the group" for the consensus.  The IETF doesn't, because the
> answer to "Who's in the group?" is supposed to be "Who replied on the
> mailing list?"

Well, no, I don't agree with that last bit, in the
sense that I don't think "replied on the mailing list"
really means the same thing as "participated."  And
the stuff we're seeing now isn't really even "replied,"
since it's not a response to discussion here but rather
a bunch of non-participants who are motivated by other
non-participants.  If they're not on the mailing list
they're posting to they are not engaged in the discussion.
You point out that they're going to go away, and I
think that's *exactly* the problem with what they're
doing.

Obviously the IETF cannot do "real" consensus decision-
making and the process is going to be compromised pretty
heavily to support participation by a huge number of
people, not all of whom are equally committed to respecting
the process itself.  I think the question in this case
is whether or not these FSF people are able to block an
IETF decision or action, and my own feeling is that if
they want to influence decisions it's easy to join mailing
lists and join in discussions and they should do that rather
than this drive-by shouting.

Melinda