Re: [wg-c] Respecting the process

["Mark C. Langston" <mark@bitshift.org>]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2000 at 07:03:32PM -0400, Milton Mueller wrote:

[...snip much good writing...]

I agree completely with what Mr. Mueller wrote here.  The fact that
6-10 was agreed upon _at all_ is significant.  The cacophony found in
the DNSO WGs lend more, not less, credence to the consensus items.

For the NC as a whole, or as individuals, to claim that they are
more in touch with "the internet community" -- to more accurately
gauge consensus than the efforts put forth by this diverse group --
is an insult, and one must wonder at the motives behind it.

While I long for the possibility of true 'rough consensus' as found
in the IETF process, where all involved are working on technical 
matters and towards more or less the same goal, it simply won't happen
here.  These fora are too factious, too politically charged, and
too financially motivated to lend themselves to that kind of effort.
In light of this, the voting system, while imperfect and disliked
by some, is the best way we have to account for consensus.

I don't want to get into another battle over what means of determining
consensus is optimum;  but I would like to point out that we at
least have attempted to employ _some_ form of determining consensus.
The NC has simply manifested (a lack of) consensus from nothingness,
and have nothing but claims that "they know people who don't like
the position" as support for claiming (a lack of) consensus.

Once more, if this is how the NC wants to do business, I strongly
recommend they stop wasting time and energy and disband the 
working groups.  Come up with what THEY believe consensus to be, 
and then solicit public feedback, and store that feedback in a
publically-accessible archive.  If they _still_ wish to claim
(a lack of) consensus, there will be a direct record disproving
such a claim.

But then, the archives of this group disprove the claim that there's
no consensus on 6-10, and nothing's being done to correct this
situation.


-- 
Mark C. Langston
mark@bitshift.org
Systems & Network Admin
San Jose, CA