Barriers to consensus formation

Brian E Carpenter brian at hursley.ibm.com
Sat Mar 8 14:25:18 CET 2003


But as Ralph has pointed out,  this kind of off-topic mailstorm, especially
when it uses an irrelevant subject field, often causes busy people
to simply switch off instead of attempting to review the high points.
So I think there is a valid problem statement here.

   Brian

Scott W Brim wrote:
> 
> The strength of text-based communication is that you don't have to
> serialize.  Everyone can "speak" at once, and be heard.  The "listener"
> can process input out of order and get results.
> 
> Let's start with the out-of-scope mail you're referring to.  I believe a
> less than fully committed participant could simply wait a bit and see
> what other people's responses are, and in that way discover that the
> message was not directly relevant.
> 
> Similarly, for in-scope mail, less than fully committed participants --
> or those that read slowly -- can start by skimming the high points, and
> if any of those seems important, work down and back from it, to discover
> issues where they feel they should say something.
> 
> Text takes more time than speech, not only to write, but to read.  Using
> mail is a classic IETF tradeoff.  However, the text is all there -- it
> doesn't have to be dealt with serially.  It's possible to contribute to
> a WG even if you're not completely dedicated, as long as you're willing
> to give up being on the leading edge all the time.  It's possible for an
> inundation of out-of-scope mail to exclude all but the most dedicated
> from *leadership*, but not from making contributions.
> 
> ..swb
> 
> On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 07:58:24AM -0500, John C Klensin allegedly wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > I just commented on a problem on the IPR list.  It has been
> > repeatedly observed as an IETF process issue, but doesn't seem
> > to be reflected in the document, so it is probably worth
> > repeating here. Ironically, it seems to affect this WG as well
> > -- a check of the archives shows a rather large number of
> > postings by a fairly small number of people.
> >
> > To quote my explanation from the other note (slightly edited)...
> >
> >       ... one of the problems with the IETF process -- or any
> >       process that attempts to work through issues on an open
> >       mailing list -- is that it is possible to exclude all
> >       but the most dedicated participants by simply creating
> >       an overwhelming message volume.  When we do it to
> >       ourselves in the IETF, it is almost always inadvertent,
> >       but it still results in a consensus determined largely
> >       by the combination of those who stay in because they
> >       have axes to grind with those who have too much time on
> >       their hands (plus a few long-suffering co-chairs and
> >       editors).    It isn't a good way to make progress or to
> >       get answers that all of us can trust.
> >
> > Extreme, and occasionally deliberate, versions of this in a WG
> > context tend to produce consensus by exhaustion -- people rant,
> > rave, and nit-pick until everyone else just drop out, leaving
> > those who initiated the tactic to claim consensus.  But forcing
> > most of the potential participants in a discussion out through
> > the accident of excessive volume can be equally destructive.
> >
> >      john
> >
> >
> > john




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