Re: IETF Last Calls and Godwin-like rules

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Thursday, February 16, 2012 07:49 -0900 Melinda Shore
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 2/16/12 6:59 AM, Alia Atlas wrote:
>> For what it is worth, those who I've seen commenting in the
>> +1 fashion recently are primarily people I've known to be
>> active in the IETF for years - including some WG chairs.

> I tend to be involved with different working groups from the
> ones
> John is, and I've assumed (forgive me) that he's seeing
> something
> somewhere that I'm not.  I've certainly seen the behavior he's
> describing (flood of non-participants "voting").  I think
> there's
> a difference between someone who's been contributing all along
> participating in a consensus call by posting "+1" and someone
> whom you can't tell whether or not actually read the draft
> posting
> "+1" and it would be surprising indeed if the person
> responsible
> for determining consensus (the chair) treated them as equal in
> weight.

Exactly.   I've also seen very clear situations in the past in
which people who haven't participated and haven't studied the
drafts have been rounded up on a mailing list associated with a
non-IETF body to "vote" in a particular way (fwiw, the worst
example I recall was with an IPR issue).
 
> Actually, come to think of it, we've seen a certain amount of
> this
> concerning the draft-weil-shared-transition-space-request
> draft.

As you point out, I'm not in a good position to judge and was
trying to not do so.  However, I did see a piece of a note to
what appeared to be a non-IETF list suggesting that people go
record their endorsements on the grounds that numbers count.
The note that started this thread was intended, in part, to
point out that numbers of otherwise-content-free endorsements
don't count very much (or shouldn't).  I hoped to make that
point before someone in the opposing group made an effort to
round up all of his friends and acquaintances.

> Anyway, I take the situation that John's describing as annoying
> but not an actual problem - we don't decide by voting.

And the particular thread started by
draft-weil-shared-transition has gone on long enough that I
assume that every IESG member, and especially the ADs who are
most relevant, are painfully aware of the issue.

There is one sense in which it is maybe an actual problem but it
isn't the voting issue (or lack thereof).  IMO, there are two
reasons why it is beneficial to have Last Call discussions on
the IETF list, rather than predominantly in private notes to the
IESG.  One is that we all get to know what the IESG is getting
told (except when the exceptions mentioned in the Last Call
announcement applies -- cases that I think it is important to
preserve).  But the other and IMO far more important reason is
that it is educational for the community: it may help people who
haven't made up their minds to do so and help others to better
understand the tradeoffs.    But, for both of those groups of
people, notes that are high in information content --
considerations and perspectives that have not appeared on the
list before, new facts and arguments-- are very useful.  People
repeating themselves and their positions are not and simply
endorsements aren't much more so - from the standpoint of
someone trying to read the discussions to build a better
understanding, both are pretty much noise (and bogus arguments
aren't much better).  And, since all of us are busy noise in a
long thread does tend to cause some messages that might contain
signal to get lost.

I don't believe anything can be "done about" the more noisy
behavior.  I can, however, hope that raising sensitivity to it
might help, if only a little, to reduce the rate at which it
increases.

    john