[Accountability-tf] Notes from 14th call (working call)

Hi everyone,

We had a good discussion on yesterday's call - here are the minutes.

Cheers

Antony


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*

*Accountability TF call minutes - 14th call (working call) *

*Attendees: *
Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, William Sylvester

*Agenda: **
**1. Consensus (sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.1.1 in draft document) **
**i) The role of the chair in determining consensus - determining 
whether an objection is valid or not. **
**ii) When does "Silence is consensus" apply? Is there a minimum of 
participation required for consensus to be legitimate?**
**iii) What are the differences between RIPE and the IETF's 
understanding of consensus?**
**
**1. Consensus (sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.1.1 in draft document) **
**
**i) The role of the chair in determining consensus - determining 
whether an objection is valid or not. *

William said there were different kinds of objections. There were people 
who objected on valid grounds, and there were sometimes trolls who 
wanted to cause trouble. A chair might also object that people were 
being self-serving in their objection. There was a recent example from 
Anti-abuse WG where a bunch of people began participating with a narrow 
self-interest in mind and were told to sit down.

William said that when the community made consensus decisions, it was 
with the greater good in mind. Decisions were favoured that lead to the 
best result for the greatest number of people. In his experience as 
chair of the Database WG, you could propose something and if no one 
objected, you could go forward. This was provided you weren't 
railroading policies through final calls and were giving people ample 
time to respond.

Malcolm said if you have 99% of the community in agreement about one 
point, it could still be held up if an objection was valid. However, in 
this case the mere fact of numbers might say something about the nature 
of the objection (provided the community hadn't been flooded with 
outsiders in an attempt to game the process). It all came down to 
whether the objection was valid or not.

Malcolm said William had made the distinction of self-serving 
objections. This was where an objection could be ruled as out of order. 
However, self-serving wasn't the same as conflict of interest - everyone 
in the community had their own interests. It was hard to express, but 
when RIPE came together, it was because the community had a shared 
interest in a common enterprise that they were trying to make work. If 
the other person shared that intention and had a different opinion, then 
there was a discussion to have about whether something was a good idea 
or not. But if someone was not a part of that enterprise and was trying 
to sabotage it, they could be ignored. And if they were only trying to 
make things the way they wanted them, then it was also legitimate to 
rule out their objection. But the chair would have to be careful in this 
case - because if the proposal didn't work for one person, it might not 
work for others.

William said it went both ways. Sometimes the community might want to 
sabotage something - e.g. a recent law enforcement proposal. It seemed 
like everyone went to the meeting to shoot it down because they felt it 
wasn't in the best interests of the community, as it was self-serving.

Malcolm agreed. RIPE had a common enterprise that they were engaged in 
collectively. The LEA wasn't engaged in the common enterprise, they were 
simply bringing in their own interests.

William referenced inter-RIR transfer policy discussions in the Address 
Policy WG where ARIN community members were trying to advance their own 
agenda at RIPE Meetings. At one point the chair had said: "Is there 
anyone not from ARIN who wants to speak?" Ultimately their opinions were 
shut down as not legitimate.

Malcolm said the consensus call was whether there was consensus in the 
community. But what was the community and how did you describe it? If 
someone was not willing to support the collective enterprise and were 
only serving themselves, then at that specific time and for that purpose 
they were not a part of the community.

Malcolm said it wasn't that ARIN's view wasn't part of the consensus, it 
was that the community decided its consensus for one preference ranked 
above the problems that would be caused by RIPE's approach being 
different from the ARIN community's. But at no point of that process was 
ARIN was acting as part of the community - as they were only seeking to 
ensure that their [ARIN's] policy was followed. And it wasn't part of 
the RIPE community's enterprise to ensure that ARIN sets the policy for 
this region.

Malcolm said if you demonstrated good faith in the way you participated 
in the process, you were included.

*ii) When does "Silence is consensus" apply? Is there a minimum of 
participation required for consensus to be legitimate? *

William said some people would say that vocal support was needed for 
consensus, while others would take the opposing view.

Malcolm said they were talking about the consensus of the community. If 
no one disagreed, in many instances that could be the will of the 
community. There was a kind of "rational ignorance" that people might be 
applying when they chose not to participate in a particular discussion. 
This was a perfectly reasonable response. They might conclude that they 
don't know as much about the topic as others in the discussion and may 
not want to invest the energy to learn about it. Low participation could 
also be because it's not that important and people could trust that the 
right people were making the decision and they would get it right. On 
the other hand, if some big deal was being snuck under the radar without 
the community noticing, then in that case silence was not consensus.

William said that seemed like a kind of macroeconomic argument that also 
applied to people choosing not to participate in the community at all. 
If someone had IP addresses and was a RIPE NCC member but chose not to 
participate - were they really a member of the community? Also, people 
might choose not to participate in a certain part of the community while 
participating in others. He was involved in the RIPE Database WG, for 
example, but not in the new IoT Working Group. Also, if he was on a 
mailing list, then maybe his silence was really an abstention.

Malcolm said the only time this would really be an issue was if a group 
of people were doing something that would have a big impact on others 
who didn't know about it.

William asked about people who might forum-shop between WGs because they 
thought the culture or personalities in a specific WG would be more 
likely to support their proposal. On the other hand, there seemed to be 
a self-correcting mechanism where chairs would try and see if it was the 
appropriate WG, or invite other WGs to participate. An example was a 
recent proposal in the Database WG that would also have an impact on 
routing.

Malcolm said forum shopping was abusive by principle. If you were aiming 
to avoid a bad reaction from a group of people, you were acting in bad 
faith.

William said the question was whether it was nefarious or whether it was 
something that happened of its own accord. If you had to choose a venue, 
you would obviously aim for the one where you were more likely to have 
success.

Malcolm said that was fine, but concealment was not okay. The reason 
that would be abusive was that even though it was the WG that declared 
consensus, they were saying that it was the consensus of the wider 
community. And they were assuming that everyone with an interest would 
be there. But concealment was a rebuttal of this claim - if you had 
reason to believe that people with an interest were not there, then the 
presumption that you were speaking for the community wasn't valid.

William asked where you drew the line. What was the test of bad faith?

Malcolm said a determination in a specific case would always be 
subjective and potentially controversial. One of the responsibilities of 
the chair was to consider these kinds of questions. If they might not 
reach consensus with certain people involved in the discussion - could 
they really say that they had consensus with those people absent? If the 
WG chair believes that the people assembled before them don't show a 
real representation of the community, then they shouldn't be declaring 
consensus.

William said before he became the Database WG Chair, he had made a 
couple of proposals that didn't get much traction with the community 
because they were narrow changes that addressed corner cases. At one 
point he thought they were ready to go forward, but the chairs mentioned 
they had discussions with community members who didn't support it. So 
they were reluctant to move the proposal forward in the PDP, despite 
there being no opposing posts on the mailing list.

Malcolm said that if the chair was acting in bad faith, they could 
exaggerate these claims and use them to hold up the process. However, if 
it the chair was acting in good faith, and did legitimately believe that 
there was a lot of opposition in the community, then there wasn't 
consensus.

William said a lot of WGs claimed that the work took place on the 
mailing list. Others conducted their business at RIPE Meetings, with 
certain pieces carried out on the mailing list. In the Database WG, they 
had one participant who had valid objections but didn't want to 
participate on the mailing list. So it was creating an interesting 
challenge trying to get them to participate in some form.

*iii) What are the differences between RIPE and the IETF's understanding 
of consensus?*

Alexander said the IETF didn't only believe in rough consensus - it also 
believed in running code. That made a difference. If you wanted to 
support an idea, you could bring some running code. In the case of RIPE, 
it was much more difficult to talk about the effectiveness of policies 
that dealt with primarily administrative matters (such as the 
multiple-LIR issue). Because of this, RIPE had to be more accurate and 
thorough with its consensus, as there was generally less available proof 
to support an argument.

Malcolm said that was a very good point. Rough consensus was not the 
sole criterion for proof at the IETF - you needed rough consensus and 
running code. Without code, you were not going forward. Because RIPE 
didn't have running code in this sense, they put more weight on 
consensus. So they needed to be more careful about the consensus call.

Malcolm said another point was the difference in what the two 
communities discussed. IETF developed protocol standards. RIPE was 
basically developing operational policies. At the IETF, you might see a 
bunch of people come forward and say: "We want to work on this and will 
develop the code" and someone else would say "I don't want you to do 
that." But that wasn't such an obstacle as it might be in RIPE.

Malcolm said another difference was that there was still the question of 
adoption, even after you had an RFC. People didn't have to adopt IETF 
standards and many weren't adopted. That's why the IETF could afford to 
be a little weaker in how it understood and applied consensus - because 
no one was forced to use the standards. In certain areas, where you were 
somewhat forced to use a standard, they were much more rigorous in their 
determination of consensus. In the RIPE world they were making policy 
that would apply to everyone. If the community decided that you needed 
to update a certain part of your RIPE Database information, then people 
would either have to do that or they would lose their allocations.

William said they were talking about how the RIPE community was making 
policy that was universal and absolute.

Malcolm said he believed there were a very large number of IETF 
standards that had no real take-up and had made no significant impact. 
It wasn't universal and it wasn't absolute. He suspected there was a 
difference in the way consensus was applied across the IETF - the test 
of whether or not there was general support for something was quite 
lenient if it was a side project, but if you wanted to modify a core 
protocol, it would be a much higher bar to cross.

Alexander suggested that they could make footnotes in their text with 
examples that supported their points and showed why they had raised 
them. Alexander also requested they put together a review of the current 
situation with RIPE Documents, so they could discuss it a little more 
productively.


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