[Mod-discuss] Re: Examples of dissent on mod-discuss

[Michael De Roover <[e-mail]>]

On Sunday, 14 September 2025 10:12:01 Central European Summer Time D. J. 
Bernstein wrote:
> The number of people pointing out problems has been downplayed again and
> again in various recent comments (e.g.: "The sole exception is you";
> "This draft encompasses WG consensus";

I have not observed this in my own discussions with other members. I believe 
the reason for this to be a social problem, not a technical problem. Generally 
businesses would define it as "being a team-player", i.e. having a 
collaborative spirit. While I cannot comment on others' views, I perceive 
yours as authoritarian.

> In particular, consensus doesn't require unanimity, but it does require
> general agreement; the quotes below show that this approach doesn't have
> general agreement.

There is indeed no clear consensus, whether that is a general vibe, or someone 
managed to define it more clearly in an RFC before.

> Almost all SDOs mandate central tracking of objections and responses.
> It's deeply problematic that IETF doesn't do this. It's too easy to
> forget objections---and, as we're seeing here, to forget how many people
> have been objecting.

While I don't think we should discuss this here, right now (the reviewers 
already have plenty of messages to sift through), I do acknowledge this as a 
meta problem. At best we can sift through thousands of RFC documents to find 
what someone else has written, and assume that our interpretation matches 
theirs as they wrote it. At worst we can sift through what I'd guess to be 
100k-1M mails on the list archives. I don't think that any sane volunteer 
would be willing to spend that much of their own engineering time on searching 
for needles in a haystack.

Again though, I do not think that this should be explored further right now. 
Ironically, this would only exacerbate the problem. Maybe we can discuss this 
further once we manage to untangle this knot first.

> This is particularly important for MODPOD, a tiny WG that's not
> representative of IETF as a whole

https://mailman3.ietf.org/mailman3/lists/mod-discuss.ietf.org/members/member/

On this page, I see that mod-discuss currently has 65 members. One of the 
largest WGs I know of, dnsop, has around 1000. I hate to be the one saying it, 
but IETF itself is not that large of an organization. Its strengths are in who 
those people represent.

I do not believe that attempting to increase those numbers by quantity alone, 
is a good idea. If people are interested to join, they can do so. That is one  
of IETF's strengths that very few (if any) other SDOs have. Our responsibility 
(and if you feel strongly about this, that includes you) is to make IETF as 
seamless as reasonably possible to join, navigate, and participate in.

-- 
[Met vriendelijke groet] [Best regards]
[Michael De Roover]
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[0] [2025-09-14 21:53 CEST]
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