Subject: Voting (again)

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:43:19 -0700

Reading through the comments on voting I am struck by a difference in
the approach people take to what the IETF is for.

* One school of thought is that the reason for starting a working group
is to arrive at a better engineering outcome than is possible
independently.

* Another school of thought is that the endorsement of a respected body
will lead to deployment

* The position I do not see argued is that the point of a working group
is to establish the constituency required to deploy the proposal.

As far as the first two positions go, I have made the mistake of
beleiving in them in the past. These days I recognize that there are
very few occasions where the way to arrive at an optimal solution is to
get a group of 40 people together to work on it. WG process improves
proposals in some respects, and is particularly valuable in ensuring
that there is some sort of consistency in the general approach. But
there are also serious negatives, a WG spec will inevitably be larger
when it exits the working group and while the result is more likely to
be consistent with legacy work the level of internal consistency will be
less.

I don't think that the imprimataur effect exists, if it did we would all
be using IPv6, IPSec and DNSsec. And this problem is not limited to
IETF, the ITU, W3C and OASIS all have the same issue. If you have a spec
that has already established a critical mass a standard can help
increase the size of the final deployment constituency. But that is not
the hard part, the real hard part is getting to that critical mass.

The real point of a working group process is to establish the coalition
of support you need to get the work deployed.  

And this has to be taken into account when you are considering votes.

All a hum tells me is who makes most noise. If I am sitting in a WG
meeting and I vote for a particular proposal then the meeting knows that
I have a level of commitment to that proposal. If the group votes the
other way and I stay in the group even so there is another data point.

In my book people who actually write code and deploy code have a rather
bigger say in the typical decision than those who do not. If someone
makes a proposal and the authors of the six major implementations and
all the ISPs in the room vote against it then in my view the proposal
isn't happening regardless of what the 'consensus' might be.

The other really big problem with hums is that they can be very
corrosive of trust in the chairs. The vote might have been in favor 40
to 10 and the chair assesed the hum as in favor and ten people still go
to the bar thinking that the system is rigged. Hums lack auditability
and as recent experience of machine voting in several countries has
demonstrated auditability is the single biggest issue for a voting
system as far as most voters are concerned. Large scale intimidation is
pretty easy to pick up.

The problem is even bigger when the chair decides to abuse their role.

Why can't we elect the WG chairs? Why can't we elect the ADs? I feel
absolutely no responsibility or duty towards officials that I have no
part in electing and I don't think many other people do. There is a
reason why the IESG is generally treated as if it was some sort of
politburo, that is how people will relate to a body that is formed by a
proceedure whose clear purpose is to distract the masses. The problem is
that the IESG is not made up of Vint Cerf, Jon Postel and co any more. 

If people want to deploy IPv6 or IPSec or DNSsec or any of the other
decades overdue technologies the IETF has grown infamous for delaying
the only way it is going to happen is to hold a meeting with the
stakeholders whose buy in is needed to deploy and to negotiate.

Contrary to what some people believe the problems are not going to be
solved by a more perfect document. Nor is refusing to hold such a
meeting under IETF auspices going to stop such meetings happening, in
fact they are going on already and the IETF is not being invited.

The biggest problem with 'voting' is the tourism factor. A group can
have a carefully worked out possition on a topic and then have it
wrecked by a group of people coming into the room because they have
heard about 'the issue' through the totally unbiased and accurate lens
of a story on Slashdot.

The way the system works in OASIS is that there is a con call every week
or two weeks and members of the group have to attend the con calls to
maintain voting rights. That system works really well, there is only one
occasion that I know of where a group of wreckers were organized well
enough to sink a rival group and that did not profit them any because
the group simply decamped to another forum.

The fact that people can leave and take their ball with them is the
thing that makes the standards process work. It is absolutely not a
failure of process that a group whose idea is rejected by the IESG can
go off and work on it elsewhere. It is the only check to balance the
whole system.

The real point of voting is legitimation. Voting on protocol design does
not make a good deal of sense but as Churchill observed (quoting
McCaullay) it is better than the alternatives. Allowing the chair to
impose their own opinion does not make much sense either.

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 03:06:14 +0200

Dear Phillip,
There is a motivation you forgot. It is to take control of your particular 
part of the world in using the IANA to lodge your vision and/or your name. 
Like a micro TLD Manager.

This goes beyond impressing your commercial/political relations in having 
signed an RFC in their area - what you quote as the second motivation. You 
become a permanent acknowledged part of the core of the Internet 
metastructure. A part of the Internet Nobility. A new Larry Robert, Doug 
Engelbart, Louis Pouzin, Jon Postel, Vint Cerf ....
jfc

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 09:03:21 -0700

Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
...
> And this has to be taken into account when you are considering votes.
...
> The problem is even bigger when the chair decides to abuse their role.

Deliberate or accidental, the phrasing of the question is known to have
a substantial effect on the outcome of a survey.

It might be useful to have a standard protocol for such questions, e.g.
starting with the question "should we accept this doc as a WG item to go
to proposed standard", many people could be likely to hum 'yes', even
though a preferred outcome is to see the doc before deciding what track
to place it in.

IMO, a scripted set of questions might go a long way to avoiding such
biases (and make WG meetings run more smoothly, as well).

As to a different key point:

> Why can't we elect the WG chairs? Why can't we elect the ADs?
...

When the IETF pays for the 60% (80%, 100%, take your pick) of an AD's
salary, they can elect ADs. Unfortunately, the current system is heavily
biased towards keeping existing ADs - who, like career politicians, can
secure financial support from their employers for continued
participation based on their current position. Perhaps it's time for
term limits ;-)

Joe

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:08:32 -0700

>  salary, they can elect ADs. 

Funding of candidates isn't the issue.  

The problem with voting is that the IETF does not have a membership list, so 
there is no real basis for running a "vote". The nomcom process is intended as 
a surrogate, randomly selecting motivated "representatives".

The model worked well when the IETF was dominated by a very large core of 
highly experienced participants with a similar framework and base of 
experience for IETF process.  

The considerable diversity of the current IETF and the lack of pervasive, 
common knowledge about IETF management, process, track record, and technology, 
means that the otherwise diligent nomcom participants must rely too heavily on 
input from the current IETF management.

The result of this is not at all surprising, as you note:

>Unfortunately, the current system is heavily
>  secure financial support from their employers for continued participation
>  based on their current position. Perhaps it's time for term limits ;-)

Over the years, the nomcom has often cited the reason for retaining someone as 
"no one else can do the job".

The idea that an international standards body for a global infrastructure 
service is THAT dependent upon a single person ought to be a rather large red 
flag to the community that some very basic changes are needed.

The nature of these changes has nothing to do with the secretariat or any of 
the other administrative enhancements that the IETF has been implementing for 
the last 3 years.

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  +1.408.246.8253
  dcrocker  a t ...
  WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net

---

From: Ari Ollikainen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:35:13 -0700

>flag to the community that some very basic changes are needed.

	So let's hear what the "very basic changes" are...

-- 

 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
 You can't depend on your judgement when your imagination is out of focus.	
						          -- Mark Twain.
 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

       OLTECO                    Ari Ollikainen
       P.O. BOX 20088            Networking Architecture & Technology
       Stanford, CA              [email-masked]
       94309-0088                415.517.3519

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:47:08 -0700

> Funding of candidates isn't the issue.  

I disagree; short of funding candidates or reducing the workload (the
latter, IMO, would be more appropriate), the list of willing candidates
is a significant part of the problem.

...
> a surrogate, randomly selecting motivated "representatives".

That is a kind of a voting process. First, you have to have attended a
certain number of previous IETFs to be eligible for NomCom participation
(which is not unlike the 'attend X meetings before you can vote' rule in
the IEEE and other organizations). How the NomCom reaches consensus is
not specified, but may involve votes.

Joe

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:05:52 -0700

Joe,

> > >  When the IETF pays for the 60% (80%, 100%, take your pick) of an
> > >  AD's salary, they can elect ADs.
>  latter, IMO, would be more appropriate), the list of willing candidates is
>  a significant part of the problem.

You were tieing funding to that ability to have a formal voting process. 
That's what I was/am disagreeing with.

However, here you are citing factors that might affect the nature and size of 
the pool of candidates and I *completely* agree with you, including what is 
the preferred change.

>  ..
> >  The problem with voting is that the IETF does not have a membership
> >  list, so there is no real basis for running a "vote". The nomcom
> >  process is intended as a surrogate, randomly selecting motivated
> >  "representatives".
> >
>
>  That is a kind of a voting process. 

Formally, sure.  However discussions in the IETF, about "voting" always use it 
to mean "by the plenary", ie, by the membership.

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:12:51 -0700

> the pool of candidates and I *completely* agree with you, including what is 

Agreed - it was poolsize I was alluding to.

> to mean "by the plenary", ie, by the membership.

That holds true for for voting in the US, but we use representatives and
vote indirectly. Ditto for the IETF, except that we use a random process
to select the representatives.

Unless we believe that there is statistical significance to the sample
thus selected, our current voting system (which is what it is) is broken...

Joe

---

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:59:34 -0700

Nomcom does use voting.  Please see RFC 3777.

I am a member of the current Nomcom, and we tried consensus first and 
then used voting to reach our decisions.  (I even learnt how Condorcet 
voting works :-)).

best,
Lakshminath

Joe Touch wrote:

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:17:12 -0400

> * One school of thought is that the reason for starting a working
> group is to arrive at a better engineering outcome than is possible
> independently.
> 
> * Another school of thought is that the endorsement of a respected
> body will lead to deployment
> 
> * The position I do not see argued is that the point of a working
> group is to establish the constituency required to deploy the
> proposal.

These are not mutually exclusive, and the last point is more dubious
than the first two.  While deployment is a necessary condition for
success, so is technical soundness.  Our broader purpose is not just to
create new protocols - it's to keep the Internet working well. 

> very few occasions where the way to arrive at an optimal solution is
> to get a group of 40 people together to work on it. 

On the contrary, there are very many occasions where the way to
understand the solution space to a problem is to involve a large number
of people with varied concerns related to that problem.  You don't want
so many people involved in the actual design - but you do want them in
on the problem definition and to provide feedback to design proposals. 
I've seen very  few occasions where a design that was done in isolation
- even by very intelligent people - held up well on the Internet.

> I don't think that the imprimataur effect exists, if it did we would
> all be using IPv6, IPSec and DNSsec. 

IETF's imprimatur does have an effect, in the sense that if there's a 
perceived need for a solution to some problem an IETF document is more 
likely to be seen as _the_ solution than a competing solution from, say,
a vendor.  IETF's imprimatur has less effect in cases where there is not
a perceived need, or the solution doesn't seem like a good fit for the
perceived need.  People don't buy new hardware or software just because
IETF has a spec for it.  And IPv6 and IPsec are certainly being used, 
though perhaps not in the way _you_ think they should be used.  

> The real point of a working group process is to establish the
> coalition of support you need to get the work deployed.  

I strongly disagree.  And treating this as the real point of a WG is
a good way to produce garbage.  What is really needed is a balance -
get the right people on board to produce a good solution that meets
a wide variety of needs, AND who will help get the result deployed.
That's not the same set of people, but often there is some overlap.

> meeting and I vote for a particular proposal then the meeting knows
> that I have a level of commitment to that proposal. If the group votes
> the other way and I stay in the group even so there is another data
> point.

That's why, in my experience, we don't rely entirely on hums.  We do
hums and straw polls, but we also take individuals' input into account.
People will adjust their hums and votes according to which individuals
support the proposal and which ones oppose it, and they'll even take
those individuals' affiliation into account.  People will say to 
themselves, if the FemtoSoft or TransCo guy is that opposed to this 
proposal, it doesn't have a chance of being deployed, so I'm going to
withhold my support also.  I've seen it happen lots of times.  I'm 
very opposed to giving FemtoSoft and TransCo more votes than anyone else
but I don't have a problem with individuals considering that certain
contributors input carries more weight than others.

> In my book people who actually write code and deploy code have a
> rather bigger say in the typical decision than those who do not. If
> someone makes a proposal and the authors of the six major
> implementations and all the ISPs in the room vote against it then in
> my view the proposal isn't happening regardless of what the
> 'consensus' might be.

And in all my IETF experience I've never seen anyone declare consensus 
when the authors of six major implementations and all of the ISPs in 
the room were opposed to it.  

> to 10 and the chair assesed the hum as in favor and ten people still
> go to the bar thinking that the system is rigged. Hums lack
> auditability and as recent experience of machine voting in several
> countries has demonstrated auditability is the single biggest issue
> for a voting system as far as most voters are concerned. Large scale
> intimidation is pretty easy to pick up.

We do rely on our chairs to not abuse their positions.  And we often 
have multiple chairs to reduce the risk of this happening.  When chairs
do abuse their positions, there's a process for that.  I do think that
we have too many cases where chairs are also document authors so that
there is an almost inherent conflict of interest.
 
> Why can't we elect the WG chairs? Why can't we elect the ADs? 

Say for the purpose of argument you're running a business, or maybe
a large non-profit organization.  Would you let your employees elect 
their managers?  Do you think that would be a good way of choosing
people who would carry out the organization's strategic goals?

The last thing that iETF needs is to let organizations buy votes by 
having their employees become members or sending them to meetings.  
We have too much influence from two or three large corporations these
days, and far too little input from operators and users.  Yes we need
the input from the corporations, but we don't need more input from them
that we have now. What we need is more balance.

I could see a place for voting in some things - like choosing people
who decide or oversee how the organization's money is spent, and 
maybe in choosing ombudsmen who would help in dispute resolution.
I don't think voting has a place in IETF's technical decision-making.

> I feel
> politburo, that is how people will relate to a body that is formed by
> a proceedure whose clear purpose is to distract the masses. 

On the contrary, the purpose of popular elections is often to distract
the masses by making them think they have buyin when they actually
don't.

Nomcom works much better than that.

> stakeholders whose buy in is needed to deploy and to negotiate.

If you had tried to identify the parties whose buyin were needed to
deploy IPsec and IPv6 you'd have gotten it wrong.  In both of those
cases a big part of the reason for the delay is that the people
developing the protocols didn't understand their target market.  (this
may still be the case to a large degree)  And it's not because the
presumed-to-be major players  weren't involved, it's because the
participants didn't fully understand and anticipate how the Internet
was changing.  Voting wouldn't solve that problem.

> fact they are going on already and the IETF is not being invited.

People say such things like it's some sort of threat or reality check.
That's silly.  Everyone should understand that there will always be 
other standards organizations (including both those that try to be
fair and balanced, and those that are shills for a particular vendor)
with different agendas than IETF.  They have their own goals and
agendas.  That doesn't mean that IETF should abandon its goals.
 
> The way the system works in OASIS is that there is a con call every
> week or two weeks and members of the group have to attend the con
> calls to maintain voting rights.

That's a really lousy way to ensure broad input and a really good way
to make sure that the group works in isolation and produces irrelevant
output.
 
> go off and work on it elsewhere. It is the only check to balance the

I agree with that much.  Competing organizations help keep IETF honest.
 
Keith