How we decide that we have decided (was: Re: Sampling)

Spencer Dawkins spencer at mcsr-labs.org
Wed Jul 30 21:10:21 CEST 2003


Dear John,

I wanted to thank you particularly for two points in your note:

- I have been telling myself since January that the problem statement
  editorial team needed to put together the best problem statement
  we could *without* trying to figure out whether the problems
  being reported to us were "real", but I wasn't sure that we
  were doing the right thing until you explained why we were
  doing the right thing in your note. Thanks!

- When the thread title was "sampling" - well, I have some
  formal training in that direction, and I was troubled because
  normally "population" is better-defined than it is in the IETF - 
  Dave was asking about bias between a sample and a population
  when I didn't have a good definition of the "population" (since
  we have no formal membership, etc. - it's almost like our
  population is a sample of a larger population). Your reference
  to those with a "material interest" was helpful to me in thinking 
  about the difference between consensus and voting. Again,
  thanks!

I'm glad we've done the problem statement work that we've
done so far, and I've noted a couple of times that we've only
added one (IIRC) "root problem" since IETF 56, so I agree
that we're on the diminshing returns part of the power curve.
Maybe part of assuming that we're all adults is letting people
read the problem statement and each figure out how to respond
as individuals - there are opportunities for structural change,
but there are an awful lot of opportunities that one or two
people can start a trend to take advantage of.

Spencer


More information about the Problem-statement mailing list