Re: discussion style and respect

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/10/15 1:58 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> Let me try this again.
> 
> 1) Is my description of the IETF process reasonably close to reality?
> E.g. does the consensus process contribute to "Standardization by
> Combat"?

In theory it should not - consensus processes, done well,
are highly collaborative.  There's not really room for
one side winning and all other sides losing.  That said,
we typically do consensus very poorly.  It probably is the
case that we often do standardization by combat, but that's
because of who we are and how we manage our processes even
though it's basically antithetical to consensus decision-making.

I think it comes down to a few things: 1) bad chairing, 2)
we do a bad job socializing new participants, and 3) a
lot of our participants aren't willing to concede any
points.  The third issue is, I think, a combination of
our poor work socialization new participants and a lot
of newer participants having employment incentives around
"winning" at standards work.

Melinda