[cooperation-wg] Internet governance

On 19 nov 2013, at 09:53, Roland Perry wrote:

> In message <3FD9D0A6-EB07-4579-AA74-6A7EBCADE814 at netnod.se>, at 08:24:41 on Tue, 19 Nov 2013, Nurani Nimpuno <nurani at netnod.se> writes
> 
>> (Anyone who is not a professional diplomat, who has been in meetings
>> where a whole document ends up in *square brackets, shivers at the
>> thought of such negotiations.)
> 
> Actually, I think it works very well, especially the square brackets part, because it allows you to park an area of disagreement (possibly sending it off to a spin-off working group to resolve amongst those who care the most) while the meeting can get on with the remainder of the document, and not losing sight of the 'big picture'.
> 
> For example, a meeting can agree the need for policy objectives in respect of rolling out IPv6, but could get derailed if there's protracted disagreement about whether to call it "deployment" or "migration". So put that word in square brackets and move on to agree the broad principles, while a subgroup works out which word has, yes I'll use the word, consensus.

I completely disagree with the comparison. Consensus is not about spending more time finding the right wording that everyone can agree on for that particular detail in that particular paragraph. Consensus is a lot more pragmatic than that. But let's not get into a long discussion about what consensus is. 

> >I am certain that when it comes to the Internet, that slowness is a >bug. Rough consensus and running code works a lot better
> 
> Probably does when debating "Standards" (or should that be "standards" - I know let's put the word in square brackets).

Not just standards. I think it's served us well in the RIR community too - creating policies that manage Internet resources. Policies that change, as the Internet changes. 

Policy affects operations and vice versa. The Internet changes as we speak. If we take several years to debate wording for a particular policy, chances are that the Internet has changed so much in the meantime that the policy describes an Internet that is long gone.

>> *Square brackets are used in UN contexts to mark text that cannot be agreed on. When I was in the UN CSTD WG on IGF improvements, in the first
>> round, we failed miserably as a group to agree on anything. Text was being thrown up on the screen, only to immediately be protested by
>> someone, and consequently being put in square brackets. At the end of the meeting, the whole document was in square brackets...
> 
> Of course, the idea is to remove the square brackets, or delete the bracketed text before the end of the meeting. If more than 10% of the document ever gets (temporarily) in square brackets the whole basis of the meeting, or the motives of the attendees, is thrown into doubt.

No comment. 
All I'll say is that I have seen this happen many times in that context.  

Nurani

> -- 
> Roland Perry
>