Re: discussion style and respect

[Hector Santos <[e-mail]>]

I've called it Rough Consensus (RC) by Osmosis.  By filtering out 
contention, RC can be achieved  and the IETF has been 
pushing/highlighting current/new procedures to control contention. 
There is definitely a new higher level of intimidation and moderation 
going on.

IMO, RC was really great at a time and in areas where there was 
unknowns in the world.  Today, nearly after hundreds of thousands of 
30+ IETF-MAN-YEARS for technology development and well established, 
solid engineering understanding of operations and technical market 
places,  a RC decision can be harmful and/or just a bad wasteful idea 
for any particular group of people.

In my view, we have:

o Too many projects done by the same few people, lost of synergism.
o Too much fast tracking,
o Too much informational or experimental status docs pushed as standards,
o Too much lower quality of products,
o Too much "big vs small" battles.

The appeal potentials are higher because of the above and even that is 
being dealt with by doing more filtering. Many times apathy develops 
and so, you just "walk away."

I do believe you need to be able to move forward at times and such 
decision processes and tools are necessary. So I say, we have "too 
much" of it going on.  A balance is needed and that is where "fair" 
leaders can help.

--
HLS

On 6/11/2015 3:31 AM, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
> When our process goes bad in the ways we're currently discussing, it's
> "consensus by last man standing" - the process of driving away all the
> others may involve insults, tenaciousness or just a huge amount of
> patience (and funding).
>
> The result is a specification that some people ignore because it's a
> stupid spec, and some people ignore because it's a result of a process
> they walked away from. This may be harmful to adoption.
>
> When our process works well, the results are adopted in the Real World -
> that's our *real* definition of success.
>
>
> On 06/11/2015 07:46 AM, Yoav Nir wrote:
>>> On Jun 11, 2015, at 12:58 AM, Michael StJohns <[e-mail]> 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”?
>> Perhaps. But the best tactic for winning this kind of combat in the IETF is not to shout louder than others. The best tactic is to get a small group around you (preferably not all from the same company), insist on your position and refuse to budge. Then wait it out until your opponents grow tired and walk away.
>>
>> It is up to chairs to prevent this kind of outcome. I mean, we think of tenacity as a good quality but it shouldn’t override all others. One way is to encourage reaching consensus quickly. Long discussions tend to favor the tenacious.
>>
>> Yoav
>>
>
>

-- 
HLS