[rpd] Opposing the last call made on the review policy

[Owen DeLong]

> On Dec 3, 2018, at 05:41 , Chevalier du Borg <virtual.borg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear AFRINIC policy staff
> 
> Can you please put a document for this proposal that show objection and response like below?
> 
> Objection no. 1
> 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
> 
> Objection no. 2
> 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
> 
> 
> Objection no. 3
> 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
> 
> 
> Objection no. n
> 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
>      - author responses 
> 
> 
> I think it will help us know exactly which objection have been addressed or not.

This would, indeed, be useful.

> A policy can never pass in this community if a virulent few people insist on say "oppose", "oppose", “oppose"

Nor should it. A consensus driven process is supposed to operate on, well, consensus. Consensus means a lack of sustained objection.

Now, if a few people say “oppose oppose oppose” without giving reasons for their opposition, that’s one thing.

However, this proposal faces sustained objection from (what I would call more than a few) on grounds that are material and relevant.

> If this bottom up thing is failing, maybe it time we leave this to gouvenment and ITU adult to operate.

So far, the only failures I see are the following:

	1.	The co-chairs buying into the flawed premise of the authors of this policy claiming that all
		proposals should be able to move forward and that the only valid input is to provide ways
		in which the proposal can be made more palatable.

		This simply isn’t true. It is perfectly valid to say “I object to this proposal, the intent of the
		proposal is not what I believe the RIR should be doing, and the proposal should not
		move forward. There is no modification that would make the proposal acceptable without
		being so drastic a change as to merit a completely different proposal.”

		That is, effectively what several people have said about this proposal. Their objections have
		been dismissed rather than addressed by the authors.

	2.	The erroneous decision by the co-chairs to move this proposal to last call despite the
		overwhelming objections expressed in the meeting, on the list, in the meeting in Dakar,
		etc. Interestingly, I think there were more objections to this proposal in Hammamet
		than in Dakar, though I have not reviewed the videos or transcripts to make an accurate
		count.

		As such, I have to wonder how the co-chairs can defend a decision to send this to last
		call when it is unmodified from the proposal which did not reach consensus in Dakar,
		the objections have been repeated and remain unaddressed (hand-waving dismissal
		does not count as addressing an objection).

		After the decision, even people who claim to support the proposal are questioning this
		decision on the list.

Outside of these two concerns which, so far, apply only to this particular proposal, I think the process is generally
working. It’s working well in 4 out of 5 regions.

Owen