Subject: Re: When is a 3933 experiment necessary? [Was: Last Call: <draft-farrell-ft-03.txt> (A Fast-Track way to RFC with Running Code) to Experimental RFC]

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:48:26 +0100

+1

AB

++++++++++++
On 1/30/2013, Dave Crocker wrote:

I suspect it's not 'increasingly' but rather that it's always been
extremely difficult...
Let me suggest a different possibility for the challenge in this topic:

We are a diverse community. Absent very, very strong consensus that a
problem is serious enough to warrant a change, the community is not
likely to line up automatically behind a proposal. We will always have
some people who prefer no change and some who offer their different,
favorite approaches, or and some who offer a zillion tweaks. In the
aggregate, that makes for entropy, not consensus.

What makes this process different from what we see in successful
working groups?
I think there are two things:

1. A wg has a committed core of participants who have agreed on a common goal.
   2. A wg process is managed.

On the average, proposals for IETF process change benefit from neither
of these.

Hence I suggest that a proposal needs to recruit a committed core
/before/ going public, and the discussion needs classic group
facilitation, in terms of tracking issues, maintaining focus, and
pursuing consensus.
d/

--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net