Re: [mpowr] Re: Getting Bad Ideas to Fail Early

[Eric Rosen <[e-mail]>]

> It is possible (in fact, I have seen it happen in WGs) where a
> larger group of inexperienced people gets behind a bad idea despite the
> attempts by the more experienced people to point out the flaws in the idea,
> so the WG chair has no choice but to call consensus for the bad idea, or let
> the WG continue to thrash until the people behind the bad idea give up (if
> they do), thus delaying the standard. 

I certainly  agree that  this is a  very significant  problem.  A WG  can be
packed with folks  who barely know what  IP is, and it is  difficult for the
chair to say  "your opinions don't carry much weight  because you don't know
what you are talking about."

> In practice, the control IETF has now on this is that the IESG has the last
> word, and the ISEG is nothing if not _the_ most experienced network
> engineers the community has. 

Unfortunately, this  part is baloney.   Members of the IESG  have frequently
expressed  contempt  for  certain   WGs,  even  if  positions  of  technical
leadership in those  WGS are held by folks whose ideas  have been helping to
shape the Internet for over 20 years.  

What's  needed is some  way to  interpret "consensus"  as "consensus  of the
clueful", where  "clueful" means "has  expertise in the field",  rather than
"agrees with me".

Most of  the arguments about whether  WG chairs should  be further empowered
are really  arguments about whether the  chairs can be  trusted to interpret
"consensus" properly. 



_______________________________________________
mpowr mailing list
[e-mail]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mpowr