Subject: Respecting the IETF rough consensus process

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 07:23:36 -0800

Folks,

During the discussion about development of an anti-harassment policy, a 
number of senior folk -- including some principal actors -- have 
privately reported to me their own belief -- or the belief of other 
principals -- that the IESG has needed to impose the decision to adopt 
the policy, without going through an explicit IETF rough consensus 
process.

Their premise is that the community would never converge on a consensus 
position.  That view is widely held in the community and has been 
frequently expressed over the years.  And they claim its truth has often 
been demonstrated, with respect to changes in IETF process or structure.

I believe their conclusion is fundamentally wrong.  The base of 
experience they cite has been marked by a distinct lack of management in 
the consensus process, instead leaving convergence to chance.

In the face of an undisciplined environment, yes it is nearly always 
certain that the IETF discussion will fail to converge.  Too many of us 
are distracted by bright shiny side-points and too many of use choose 
competing goals.  And that won't change.

Besides general mayhem in the style of discussion that happens on the 
IETF list when there is no structured facilitation, we tend to confuse 
"some people still object" with "we have no rough consensus".  (See Pete 
Resnick's emerging paper on consensus.)  That is, the assessment filter 
of the folks deciding whether we've got consensus is broken.

Lastly there is the problem that a rough consensus process for any 
interesting topic is always messy, and many folk don't want the hassle. 
  Unfortunately, the making of an IETF consensus sausage does not 
tolerate process vegetarians.  If we are going to say we still believe 
in rough consensus, we need to exercise its process engine, whether we 
like it or not.  It takes time.  It takes very careful effort.  It's 
frustrating.  But it /can/ work.

The solution is quite simple and effective:

      When there is a proposal in front of the IETF community, assign a 
facilitator whose job it is to actively assist the discussion in seeking 
consensus.  The techniques for this are well-established and working 
groups often use it (but not nearly enough, in my view.)

      At a minimum, the facilitator will record and track issues, 
summarize discussion segments, and prompt the community to focus on 
specific issues, to get them resolved.

      As a discussion convenience, the facilitator can also attempt to 
judge rough consensus on the issues, although they do not need to be 
given formal authority to assert its presence.

For the anti-harassment policy, we happen to have pretty obvious and 
massively strong community support for developing the policy.  That we 
also have plenty of evidence that some folk will never be satisfied with 
whatever text emerges is a distraction.  Once those folk have had their 
say and the group has discussed their concnerns constructively and hass 
attempted to resolve the concerns, we are not obligated to please such folk.

If we really do respect our core precept of rough consensus, we are 
obligated to apply it to our own structure and process change efforts.

The IETF community really is the higher authority for the IETF.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 08:47:36 -0800

I'm a fan of consensus decision-making processes and will generally -
but not always - advocate for their use.  I think that this is one
of those "not always" cases.  First, we do not run every single
decision past the IETF, so I think that argument needs to be put
to rest.  Furthermore, we do not always allow the consensus
decision to carry the day - for example, it's common to have
broad support for undertaking a piece of work but not have that
work go forward because of opposition from the I*.  The answer to
that seems to be that the position that prevails does so on
technical merit, and I hope that's true (although I'm not convinced
that it's always true).  But, I think it's important to understand
that when that happens, we're dismissing consensus views because
we think that those views are wrong, not because there's consensus
to do something different.  In those cases, the I* are not simply
respecting the consensus of the body, they're doing something
different.

Anyway, we're now in a situation in which a few people have
expressed concern that an ombudsman could make bad situations worse.
I think that's a valid concern - anybody who reads the Washington
Post has probably seen an ombudsman make some really terrible
decisions, and just recently we saw the IETF mailing list
ombudsman make what I thought was a good decision on a just
awful basis.  But given that, my own feeling is that the benefit
of having an anti-harassment policy outweighs the possible cost
of having one which might occasionally lead to bad/incorrect
outcomes.  Someone else might feel differently, and they would
not be wrong, they're just operating within a different
framework and have different values.  It's extremely difficult
to come to consensus in that situation, particularly when you've
got thousands of participants and a notable lack of interest on
the part of entirely too many in saying "I don't agree, but I can
live with that."

And then there are issues around the establishment of bases for
a decision.  It is not unreasonable for people to ask whether or
not there's an actual problem, and whether or not past incidents
have been sufficiently severe to merit the creation of a policy.
We've seen those requests.  I think that it's very much in the
interest of the people involved not to allow those to be relitigated
in public.

I think one of the things to understand about consensus decision-
making is that it has notably poor scaling properties.  I absolutely
agree that we need to be better at managing how we reach decisions
within a consensus framework, but I also think we need to be smarter
about recognizing when it's the just plain wrong process to use.  We
let the IESG handle a lot of "management" decisions, and I'm good
with letting them handle this one.

Melinda

---

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 08:52:05 -0800

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>wrote:

> of those "not always" cases.

Well said. I concur. The consensus principle is sound but its not an
absolute. I think that the matter at hand demanded action which would not
have completed quickly under a normal consensus seeking WG driven process.
What we have now will be tractable, and reflects wider society norms and
expectations. We can improve from here.

I'd like to congratulate the people who worked on this solution for getting
to somewhere fast which can hopefully quench emerging problems.

It saddened me hugely when I learned we needed this. It pleased me much
that we got to somewhere this quickly.

-G

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From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 10:52:46 -0800 (PST)

Before anyone thinks that I am against the anti-harassment policy,
let me state up front that I am not. That said...

On Wed, November 6, 2013 7:23 am, Dave Crocker wrote:
[snip]
> attempted to resolve the concerns, we are not obligated to please such

  If there is actually "pretty obvious and massively strong support" then
there is not only rough consensus, there is some pretty solid consensus.
And then there's no need to assign a facilitator to track and resolve
issues. We're done.

  But the sentiment expressed above is unfortunate I think because it
dismisses dissent and just pay lip service to addressing the concerns
that dissent represents. You're talking about entering into a supposedly
consensus building process with the notion that the decision is already
made. That's a recipe for just pissing people off.

  Replace "the anti-harassment policy" with some policy you don't like
and then read it again as if I said it to you.

  Dan.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:01:33 -0800

> there is not only rough consensus, there is some pretty solid consensus.

There seems to be some common confusion here.

There's a difference between my or your personal belief about a state of 
affairs, such as what a group feels, versus the formal mechanism of 
assessing it.  I merely offered my personal opinion.

What's needed is the formal mechanism of explicitly and formally 
engaging in the consensus process that is well-established in the IETF. 
  This requires a call, it requires processing feedback publicly and 
carefully, and it requires an on-the-record assessment of the responses.

> And then there's no need to assign a facilitator to track and resolve

Possibly, but probably not.  We have already seen quite a bit of 
critical feedback.  Not just from me.  There is no record of any of it 
getting processed accountably, with respect to the document.

I say that in spite of the fact that some of the changes I suggested did 
make it into the current draft.  But it was a black box (ie, not public 
and not accountable) process.

We're not supposed to work that way.

> made.

I am doing no such thing.  I said massive support for doing something.

I didn't say I know there's massive support for the current text (though 
it won't surprise me if there is that) but I also said there is a 
requirement for processing concerns.

And for reference, I'll repeat that there is also the requirement to vet 
the current text with legal and human resources experts.

d/

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From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 21:51:04 +0100 (CET)

Dave Crocker wrote:
> 
> During the discussion about development of an anti-harassment policy

There are serious problems with letting american do policies,
because they have a strong tendency to go wrong, sometime very wrong.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/zero-tolerance.html

Please be careful, and do not let this go wrong.
We need common sense, discretion and reasonable judgment.

-Martin

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From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 21:26:03 -0000

Martin,

> because they have a strong tendency to go wrong, sometime very wrong.

This is either trolling or unacceptable or both.
Using someone's nationality as a metric by which you will predict the quality of
their work is not appropriate behaviour.
Please stop.

If what you want to say is "this is important, please get it right" then that is
fine.

Moving on.

Adrian