Subject: No communication: #746 IAOC decision making

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:22:58 +0100

In the -03 version of the document, the following text occurs:

3.4  IAOC Decision Making

   The IAOC attempts to reach all decisions unanimously.  If unanimity
   cannot be achieved, the IAOC chair may conduct informal polls to
   determine the consensus of the group.  In cases where it is
   necessary, some decisions may be made by voting.  For the purpose of
   judging consensus or voting, only the "voting members" (as defined in
   Section 4) shall be counted.  If voting results in a tie, then IAOC
   chair decides how to proceed with the decision process.

   IAOC decisions are taken by a majority of the non-conflicted IAOC
   members who are available to vote, whether in person or via other
   reasonable means determined to be suitable by the members of the
   IAOC.  The IAOC decides further details about its decision-making
   rules.  These rules will be made public.

   The IAOC shall establish and publish rules to handle conflict of
   interest situations.

   All IAOC decisions shall be minuted, and IAOC minutes shall be
   published regularly.

Scott Bradner raised the issue that he thought this section should include 
quorum rules. This debate forked:

- Rob Austein and I argued strongly that the IAOC should set those detailed 
rules, and that the BCP was not the right place to put them; Brian 
Carpenter and Bert Wijnen spoke out in support of that.

- Scott Bradner, John Klensin, Avri Doria, Brian Carpenter and Spencer 
Dawkins made (good) suggestions on what the quorum rules should be, 
including interesting topics like emergency powers, appropriate 
technologies for voting, the interaction between rules for conflict of 
interest and quorum rules and so on - but apart from the comments from 
Brian early in the discussion (not needed) and Scott's (which I interpreted 
as saying it needed to be in the BCP), I did not see any explicit statement 
in their comments on whether the quorum rules needed to be in the BCP or 
not.

My personal opinion is that the debate has given compelling evidence that 
quorum rules are NOT easy to get right, which also leads me to believe that 
we will need to change them on a shorter timescale than the expected rate 
of change of the BCP - thus that they should NOT be in the BCP; the BCP 
should just require that they are public. (a rule that says "two people in 
a closet" is probably a short road to the recall process...) But this 
process is not about my opinion, but the IETF's opinion.

So - Scott, can you confirm that you think quorum rules should be in the 
BCP? Rob, can you confirm that you think they should not be?

Brian, John, Avri and Spencer: Can you state if you have an opinion about 
whether or not the quorum rules should be in the document or not?

Let's get this point settled before we dig into what the quorum rules 
should be - if they don't go into the BCP, the whole text of #746 gets 
passed as "advice from the IETF community to the IAOC".

                     Harald

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---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:32:27 -0500

Harald,

My personal, generic, preference is to put as little specific
text into the BCP as possible.  Broad principles, yes.  But
anything very specific, especially anything that is likely to
need tuning, should be in the BCP only if there are really
strong reasons why that is necessary.  So I'd be quite happy
with text directing the IAOC to establish voting rules and to
publish them or, better yet, to propose such rules for comment
to the IETF community and then establish and publish them (the
difference between the two is not a showstopper for me).

An extension of that point of view would argue that the present
(-03) text is excessive and could reasonably be further trimmed.
For example, I doubt that it is really necessary to walk through
the unanimity/ consensus-and-polls / voting/ ties model in this
much detail.  Perhaps it would be preferable to just say that
the IAOC may vote when necessary, with only the "voting members"
voting (see how silly that sounds) and the chair figuring out
how to make decisions in the event of deadlock, but that the
IAOC should have a strong preference for unanimity or strong
consensus over close votes (and then insert the conflict of
interest statement).   But, again, not a showstopper -- I think
we are close enough and that anything in this range would be ok
with me.

    john

--On Wednesday, 12 January, 2005 22:22 +0100 Harald Tveit
Alvestrand <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Scott Bradner raised the issue that he thought this section
> should include quorum rules. This debate forked:
> 
> - Rob Austein and I argued strongly that the IAOC should set
> those detailed rules, and that the BCP was not the right place
> to put them; Brian Carpenter and Bert Wijnen spoke out in
> support of that.
> 
> - Scott Bradner, John Klensin, Avri Doria, Brian Carpenter and
> Spencer Dawkins made (good) suggestions on what the quorum
> rules should be, including interesting topics like emergency
> powers, appropriate technologies for voting, the interaction
> between rules for conflict of interest and quorum rules and so
> on - but apart from the comments from Brian early in the
> discussion (not needed) and Scott's (which I interpreted as
> saying it needed to be in the BCP), I did not see any explicit
> statement in their comments on whether the quorum rules needed
> to be in the BCP or not.
> 
> My personal opinion is that the debate has given compelling
> evidence that quorum rules are NOT easy to get right, which
> also leads me to believe that we will need to change them on a
> shorter timescale than the expected rate of change of the BCP
> - thus that they should NOT be in the BCP; the BCP should just
> require that they are public. (a rule that says "two people in
> a closet" is probably a short road to the recall process...)
> But this process is not about my opinion, but the IETF's
> opinion.
> 
> So - Scott, can you confirm that you think quorum rules should
> be in the BCP? Rob, can you confirm that you think they should
> not be?
> 
> Brian, John, Avri and Spencer: Can you state if you have an
> opinion about whether or not the quorum rules should be in the
> document or not?
> 
> Let's get this point settled before we dig into what the
> quorum rules should be - if they don't go into the BCP, the
> whole text of #746 gets passed as "advice from the IETF
> community to the IAOC".
> 
>                      Harald
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:39:59 -0600

> Brian, John, Avri and Spencer: Can you state if you have an opinion 
> about whether or not the quorum rules should be in the document or 
> not?
>
> Let's get this point settled before we dig into what the quorum 
> rules should be - if they don't go into the BCP, the whole text of 
> #746 gets passed as "advice from the IETF community to the IAOC".

I'm fine with passing as advice. I'd like the quorum definition to be 
public information, but don't think it has to be in this document to 
be public.

Spencer

---

From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:09:07 -0500 (EST)

> BCP? Rob, can you confirm that you think they should not be?

imo - if rules for voting are in the document then quorum rules should be
but I'm fine with the idea that the document say
	1/ general method is consensus
	2/ the IAOC will develop and publish quorum and voting rules
	   and publish them for the cases where consensus can not
	   be found

Scott

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 14:14:38 +0100

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>> about whether or not the quorum rules should be in the document or not?
>>
> public information, but don't think it has to be in this document to be 
> public.

Agreed. I think we can limit the BCP to stating that the IAOC must make
and publish appropriate voting and quorum rules.

    Brian

---

From: Rob Austein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:55:14 -0500

At Wed, 12 Jan 2005 22:22:58 +0100, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> ...

<hat editor=off just-another-bozo=on>

Sorry, I had missed that there was a direct question to me buried
in this thread.

You are correct that I don't think that quorum rules need to be in the
BCP, or should be in the BCP, but that was not quite my main point,
and since it may be relevant in figuring out which of the several
sides of this discussion I'm on, I'll attempt to explain.

If the IETF were to reach a rough consensus that such rules were
necessary and belonged in the BCP, I would not stand in the way of
well-thought-out quorum rules, explictly phrased as such.

What really bothered me was what seemed to be an attempt to invent new
quorum rules, without calling them quorum rules, and with inadaquate
attention to how they would work.  This resulted in various bizzare ad
hoc formulations that included enough details to cripple any attempt
by the IAOC to set its own rules in this area, while simultaneously
falling short of setting rules that had any real chance of being
workable in the unlikely event that they were ever needed.

Seldom-executed code paths are trouble.  Untested seldom-executed code
paths are worse.  Hastily written code paths set in concrete and left
untested until an emergency occurs strike me as a really bad idea;
I'll admit that there are situations in which which all available
alternatives might be worse, but I don't think this is one of them.

</hat>