[Pesci-discuss] PESCI, WGs and the consensus process

In the starkest terms I can think of, my thought on the WG/team/process 
change is:

- Getting consensus in the IETF for reasonably deep changes has SUCCEEDED - 
see the IASA work, painful as it was.

- Getting consensus in a WG (which gathers together many of the people who 
find process work interesting, and scares away quite a few of the people 
who want to get other work done) has FAILED (see the second PROBLEM WG RFC).

(While NOMCOM and IPR are sometimes quoted as "successes", I want to point 
out that both groups had "no basic changes" results.)

Getting public input into a process is essential to making that process' 
results be acceptable to the IETF. So public discussion lists like this are 
important - and topic-specific discussion lists like this limit the impact 
of the discussion on other things the IETF needs done (like discussion of 
venue selection criteria...?)

A point that distinguished the success from the failure above seems to be 
the requirement that one needs to find *consensus* within the smaller 
mailing list. A design team can say "we have received input, some of which 
is reflected here, some of which we disagree with" - and go straight to the 
whole IETF and ask for their consensus (either ask for consensus that the 
solutoin is right, or ask for consensus that the IETF should consent to 
letting the stuff go ahead - these are subtly different.....)

I think relatively drastic changes to the IETF are needed. I'd like to find 
a path where those changes are possible. In finite time.

                Harald