Subject: RE: Clarification of my comment on giving up on process issues

From: "Ed Juskevicius" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:42:31 -0500

Sam Hartman wrote:
> So, I'm close to concluding that we don't have mechanisms
> for getting consensus on larger process changes

I share your sentiment on this.  

I wonder if part of the reason is we often resort to a modus operandi of
"let a thousand flowers bloom" and "let the market decide" for
contentious issues.  While that *might* work for a technology spec, it
clearly is not a workable means of progressing process change proposals.

I regret I don't have a solution to offer here, but I have hope that
further dialogue around your feelings and my observations (herein) might
lead to some proposals.

Regards,

Ed Juskevicius

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Hartman [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:43 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Clarification of my comment on giving up on process issues

Hi.

I gave a presentation at genarea today and commented that I strongly
felt like giving up on any participation in process change efforts as a
lost cause.

I want to explain what is frustrating me and to explain what is not
frustrating me.

Several people said that I need to get more review of my draft. That's
reasonable and I'll work on that.  I admit significant frustration that
concerns about lack of review were not raised during last call.  However
that's par for the course; last call comments including recommendations
for more review come in up to the point that a document is approved and
we're all used to that.

Also, if people believed that the basic approach I'm taking--delegating
power to the IESG--was wrong, that would be fine. People disagree with
each other all the time.

What I am frustrated by is that it looks like we're headed for the same
sort of deadlock that we've had with all the process proposals.

I suspect that I can get my draft published and that it will not be too
difficult to do so.

However I don't think we're building the sort of community consensus
behind RFC 3933 as an approach to breaking process reform deadlock that
it will actually be useful to us.  What happens when John submits his
nomcom proposal as an RFC 3933 experiment?  Would there be any plausable
way he  could move forward on that proposal using RFC 3933?  

If the answer is that RFC 3933 is not the solution, then what is?  We
did not have consensus behind pesci at IETF 64.We've not had consensus
behind what process priorities were appropriate in other cases.

So, I'm close to concluding that we don't have mechanisms for getting
consensus on larger process changes and that perhaps the right approach
is to just move on with our existing processes.  They mostly work after
all.

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---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:13:05 -0500

>>>>> "Ed" == Ed Juskevicius <[email-masked]> writes:

    Ed> I wonder if part of the reason is we often resort to a modus
    Ed> operandi of "let a thousand flowers bloom" and "let the market
    Ed> decide" for contentious issues.  While that *might* work for a
    Ed> technology spec, it clearly is not a workable means of
    Ed> progressing process change proposals.

My argument is that proliferation of competing process change
proposals may well be an appropriate mechanism for RFC 3933
experiments--even when these are significant process experiments.  I
think recruiting the stakeholders will provide enough of a gate.

But this is only true if the community buys into the approach .

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 16:07:49 +0100

> But this is only true if the community buys into the approach .

There could be simultaneous proposals of course. There could certainly
be simultaneous process experiments. However, I guess there couldn't
be simultaneous process experiments that are inconsistent with
each other.

     Brian