Last Call: 'IETF Problem Statement' to Informational RFC

[Keith Moore]

> Right.  Note that 2418 explicitly notes that rough consensus is not the
> same as unanmity -- chairs are perfectly free to declare consensus even
> if there are some objections to a document.

True.  However, in 13 or so years in IETF this is the first time I can 
recall that a chair has insisted that last call comments be considered 
valid only if the group has expressed affirmative consensus on them.  I 
believe WG participants have come to expect last call comments to be 
evaluated for reasonableness, not  that they're being asked to reach a 
separate consensus on every issue raised in last call.

This insistence by the chair seems especially odd for a document which 
is not a consensus statement, but a "list of problems that are believed 
to exist by a significant constituency".  We don't have even rough 
consensus on this list of problems, what we have is the biases and 
editorial decisions of the authors and chairs.

Also, we normally place an even higher value on correctness than we do 
on consensus, and most of my comments were specifically intended as 
corrections to inaccurate statements and exaggerations that are in the 
document.  If IESG doesn't agree that these statements need to be 
corrected, well, at least someone besides the WG chairs will have 
considered it.