[rpd] Proposal Update received: Internet Number Resources Review by AFRINIC

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jun 13, 2019, at 2:39 AM, Arnaud AMELINA <amelnaud at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Owen, see inline  
> 
> Le lun. 10 juin 2019 à 17:27, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> a écrit :
> 
> 
>> On Jun 10, 2019, at 02:24 , Arnaud AMELINA <amelnaud at gmail.com <mailto:amelnaud at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Owen,
>> 
>> Thanks for the quick review and thanks for spending your time to review and comment on the unnecessary, duplicative, Ill-advised proposal.
>> 
>> We appreciate your comments and suggestions and will consider them.
>> 
>> Even though, there is no room for the acknowledgment session in the CPM, it remains a good way to acknowledge effort and contribution of people throughout the proposal lifecycle.Same remark applies to the authors who are not  also listed  in the CPM. 
> 
> Yes, but move it out of the proposed policy section of the proposal.
> 
> Hmmm. 
> Why is this suddenly so important? it has been there since version 3.0 of the proposal.

Really, It has been part of the policy text proposal and not some other part of the submission since version 3.0? If so, then somehow I missed that. Perhaps it’s part of the poor numbering in this new version that did not appear to afflict previous versions.

Perhaps that makes it simply more visible.

> Have you found another substantive objection?  do you have an issue with those listed there or concerned for those not listed? 

Not at all. I think the existing substantive objections which have not been addressed are more than sufficient.

> This objection will be addressed and accommodated. Section 4.0  will be removed.
> 
> 
>> We continue to disagree on definition of “community” and “ consensus”  and I expect the PDP to  be followed to determine the future of this proposal.
> 
> I expect the PDP to be followed, too. That is why I ask that the authors recognize the lack fo consensus and let it expire or withdraw it.
> 
> The community is the set of all natural persons who are interested in participating in the policy process and possess an email address which they can utilize for that purpose. Do you disagree with this definition?
> 
> The disagreement on community came from your claim of  “complete lack community consensus”. We have seen the opposite and wonder which “community” were you referring to.

I’m referring to the community participating in the meetings and on the mailing list where dissent against this proposal continues to grow.

What “community” are you referring to where consensus allegedly exists?

> As to consensus, I am following the IETF definition of rough consensus wherein all remaining objections have been addressed and there is wide support within the community for the proposal.
> 
> IETF consensus calls for all objections to be addressed and not necessary accommodated.
> Consensus is a path and not a destination and looking at it as a destination takes you to the voting mentality which you are showing below by comparing  number of "dissenters" to "supporters”.

Yes, many substantial objections have not yet been addressed, let alone accommodated.

Addressed means that the objections have reached a point where the objectors are willing to say “I don’t like it, but I can live with it” or something close to that.

Many of the objections are not to that point as things currently stand. There is a lot of dissent from this proposal that people have outright stated they do not want it implemented.

I am not in a voting mentality. I pointed out that the roughly equal number of dissenters is an indication that you are far from consensus or even rough consensus in that rough consensus can be achieved with a relatively small number of dissenters, but it certainly cannot exist where anything close to 50% of the active participants in a discussion are objecting to the proposal being discussed.

Development is a path. Consensus is one of two possible destinations. The other is abandonment, withdrawal, or expiration (end result is the same, but there are subtle differences in the mechanisms and paths).

> Given that you have at least a roughly equal number of dissenters and supporters and that the number of dissenters seems to be growing rather than shrinking, I would argue that the authors have most definitely failed to achieve anything resembling rough consensus with this policy.
> 
> I know you as ARIN AC member, but not AFRINIC PDWG co-chair. Why are you trying to play co-chair? Co-chairs have been elected to lead the process including the consensus path.
> Where did you get these numbers from? Are you counting those who are recruited to say  “ I oppose with no new arguments”?
> The IETF rough consensus clearly stated that objection or support is not based on volume or persistence. 

I am not trying to play co-chair. I am acting as a member of the community standing up and stating that this is a bad policy proposal and pointing out that there are a growing number who appear to agree with me.

What is wrong with objecting to a policy for the same reasons as someone else stated? You don’t make such a requirement of supporters, do you? Does each supporter have to come up with a new unique reason to support your proposal? If I were to insist on such a thing, you would call me ridiculous and you would be right. Similarly, it is ridiculous to claim that those who object but do not 

Of course consensus is not based on volume, but, a large volume of objections certainly represents a clear lack of consensus. This cannot be legitimately denied.

> Let assume a second that your numbers were correct. Can't you see that in the case  of “rough equal numbers”, you can’t say “complete lack of community consensus” ? 

Actually, I can say complete lack of consensus in that case… Consensus means a lack of sustained objections. Rough consensus means a lack of sustained objections that have not been “adequately addressed” where adequately is usually defined in terms of the objectors being willing to live with the outcome. An example of this might be a new protocol proposal where 80% of the participants in the working group want a fixed 256-bit field, 10% want a 128-bit field, and 10% want a variable-length field with a 16-bit length field.

After vigorous debate and hearing the reasoning behind the desires for each choice, the 20% who preferred alternatives come to a point where they state that they still believe they have offered the best choice, but they can live with the 256-bit fixed field because they feel it is more important to move forward than to get exactly what they want.

That’s rough consensus.

If you have even 30% continuing to say “I object to this proposal for X reason and the authors have done nothing to change that”, then by definition, you do not have anything remotely resembling consensus. I believe that we are well beyond 30% objecting here. As such, yes,
I feel quite comfortable saying that there is a complete lack of consensus among the participating community when it comes to this proposal.

> At least, What one would expect in this kind of split situation, is that co-chairs facilitate the discussion for the concerns raised to be accommodated or reasons for not accommodating them explained  further.

I’m all for the co-chairs doing so. I am not trying to be a co-chair here. However, you continue to approach this with the apparent belief that all proposals should eventually reach consensus and become policy. This simply isn’t the case.

I am not as familiar with navigating the AfriNIC policy archives, so I will point to this ARIN page instead:

https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/archive/ <https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/archive/>

Note that there are two distinct and nearly equal length lists here.

The first is proposals that reached consensus and became policy.

The latter is for proposals which were abandoned and never became policy.

I’m sure that there is a similar pile of failed proposals in AfriNIC’s history as well.

I can think of a few examples off the top of my head:
	+	Anti-Shutdown proposal
	+	Alternative SL-BIS proposal
	+	Inter-regional Transfer proposals (a few of these)

Not every proposal has to become policy and this one is definitely a good candidate for the proposal scrap-heap.

> If you feel that I am wrong about this, please explain what measure of “community” and what measure of “consensus” you are using. Perhaps you can educate me as to where my definitions do not match the PDP.
> 
> I hope the above clarify

Yes, it’s now quite clear that I am not the one that appears to be missing something.

Thank you,

Owen
> 

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