Subject: Re: Why ask for IETF Consensus on a WG document?

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:36:15 -0400 (EDT)

> From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>

    > I just don't think that adding "historic" to those pieces of advice
    > will be influential in accomplishing the goals, that it is a too-blunt
    > instrument, and its application in this sort of situation is more
    > likely to bring discredit on the IETF than to accomplish the purpose
    > for which its advocates are encouraging it. I believe I'm probably in
    > the minority on that position

The fact that you're in a minority shouldn't matter.

Dave Clark's phrase "rough consensus" gets tossed around a lot, but we seem to
be missing the clear point of what it says. People seem to be focusing on the
'rough' part, and not on the 'consensus': "consensus" is the noun, and "rough"
is just a modifier. In other words, we should focus on basically having
consensus; if we have lots of people - and especially people with significant
technical weight - disagreeing with a position, we don't 'basically have
consensus'.

If Dave had meant to say 'significant majority', he could have said that
instead. He didn't. But that is effectively the standard people are now
applying - not 'basically consensus'.

I believe that he picked "rough consensus" instead for a very good reason
(below) - but even if this reason was not in his mind, it still seems to me
the best argument why "rough consensus" is the right standard to apply instead
of 'significant majority', in what is basically a 'herding cats'
organization. When you have a _significant_ minority which is really unhappy
with a decision, it's going to have poisonous effects which are going to
hamper the promulgation/adoption of that design/decision/etc. And this is in
fact what have seen happen, when we crossed this line before.

Not that I really expect anything to happen here as a result of this. The IETF
has ignored this principle before (to its grave cost), and I expect it will
again here, with the exact result which you forsee ("bring discredit on the
IETF"). Where an accumulation of these will bring us to eventually is anyone's
guess.

	Noel