Anonymity means that a cabal can block progress without being held accountable.
If you can't argue your case in public you should be asking why. Sent from my GoodLink Wireless Handheld (www.good.com) -----Original Message----- From: Lakshminath Dondeti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:14 PM Pacific Standard Time To: Michael Thomas Cc: Hallam-Baker, Phillip; Brian E Carpenter; John C Klensin; IETF Discussion; Jeffrey Hutzelman Subject: Re: consensus and anonymity Excellent point about the disconnect between meeting room hums and opinions on the lists. But, I wonder why anonymity is an important requirement. The mailing list verification has at least two properties that are more important to the IETF: the archives provide for anyone to be able to verify the consensus independent of the IETF hierarchy (chairs, ADs and whoever); further the archives provide a means to verify the consistency of any IETF participant, chairs or ADs at any given moment, candidates for WG chair and I* positions, and anyone in general. The IETF should be more transparent and allow at least a distributed verification process and not a centralized hierarchical process. Lakshminath On 5/31/2007 10:22 AM, Michael Thomas wrote: > Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: >> The problem with consensus is how you decide to count the >> undecideds/neutrals. In most cases of controversy there will be a >> small group pro, a small group con and the bulk of the WG will be >> somewhere inbetween. If the breakdown is 25%/25%/50% a biased chair >> can effectively decide the outcome by choosing to interpret 'no >> objection' as 'no support' or vice versa. >> > One thing that occurs to me is that there is usually a huge disconnect > between > the participation in hums at a meeting and the email equivalent on the > working > group list. I'd say that it's typically between one and two orders of > magnitude > at a meeting more hands/hums than on the list. And of course, on the > list it's > usually just a rehash of the same active participants with a few > stragglers thrown > in. > > Maybe part of the problem with the "official" consensus taking on the > list is > that it isn't sufficiently anonymous? It's pretty easy in a crowd to hum or > put up your hand in a sea of others; on the list, it requires quite a > bit more > conviction. Apathy is the other likely reason, but there's not much we can > do about that short of working group demolition derby videos or suchlike. > > So might having the ability to contact the chairs in private to register > their > preference be reasonable? I don't recall seeing this in any of the working > groups I've participated in. > > Mike >
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