[anti-abuse-wg] About "consensus" and "voting"...

All,

I think Randy has written this very clearly. That said, I am happy to discuss the concepts, and why the RIPE Community cleaves to them, with people, either on or off list.

The RIPE WGs, AA-WG included, have made policy and changed things over the years through this method. It's not perfect, nothing involving humans is, but policies have reached consensus, change has been effected, and I believe that will continue. Consensus is a great way to achieve that. And it's very important to remember that one voice can't stop that change just by objecting, in the same way one voice can't effect change just by repeatedly asking for it, if there is not consensus.

As Nick points out, there have been policies to which people objected, but those policies reached consensus, because the community and the Chairs adjudged that those objections had been addressed.

If there is ever a future where the RIPE Community changes our way of policy development then it will be a Community effort to make that change, and the AA-WG Co-Chairs have no intention of even attempting to suggest an exception for 2019-04.

Thank you all for your continued involvement,

Brian
Co-Chair, RIPE AA-WG


Brian Nisbet

Service Operations Manager

HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network

1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland

+35316609040 brian.nisbet at heanet.ie www.heanet.ie

Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270

________________________________
From: anti-abuse-wg <anti-abuse-wg-bounces at ripe.net> on behalf of Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>
Sent: Saturday 9 May 2020 19:36
To: "Sérgio Rocha" <sergio.rocha at makeitsimple.pt>
Cc: anti-abuse-wg at ripe.net <anti-abuse-wg at ripe.net>
Subject: Re: [anti-abuse-wg] About "consensus" and "voting"...

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> Otherwise we change the way the working Groups works it will remain
> unchanged for ever. I agree that we must get a way to vote or another
> democratic way to get decisions.

the goals of the ripe community are stewardship and cooperation, not
voting, deciding, and "getting things done."  you can look at the
current us govt for a great example of why not.

if we can not come to consensus on something, then we are patient.
and that's ok.  we move as a cooperative community and that takes
time.

yes, this becomes more complex as the community scales and becomes
more diverse.  and we want diversity and wide representation.  so
ever more patience is needed; not the means to rush to judgment.

for a large segment of the community, and that which was pretty much
the original population, there is an underlying physics and shared
experience of moving packets, routing, circuits, bgp, ixen, ... that
gives us a common experience and understanding.

as we become more diverse, the physics of that shared experience and
understanding weakens.  so cooperative/consensus decision making is
more complex and takes longer.  welcome to a larger and mode diverse
community.  this is good.

but we are stewards of one internet.

it took eight, yes eight, years for me to get the ietf to change a
constant from 4k to 64k (rfc 8654).  so my sense of urgency may be a
little different than that of others.

randy

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