Setting standards without kings or votes: “[...] In the intervening 25 years, it turned into a standards organization that creates standards related to the technical operation of the Internet.
However, the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] is quite a bit different from traditional standards organizations such as ANSI, ISO, or the IEEE Standards Association. Standards organizations typically have high thresholds for membership—in some cases, you can only join the club if you’re a country—and only make their standards available for a (high) fee. Not so with the IETF: “There is no membership in the IETF. Anyone may register for and attend any meeting. The closest thing there is to being an IETF member is being on the IETF or Working Group mailing lists.”
This comes directly from The Tao of IETF, which is the best introduction into this strange and wonderful world—short of attending a meeting in person. If you don’t have that kind of time, two quotes provide a pretty good feel of how the IETF sees itself: “We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code” (David Clark). And: “Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you accept” (Jon Postel). [...]” http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/25-years-of-ietf-setting-standards-without-kings-or-votes.ars
admin is discussing. 
admin 11:02 on March 6, 2011 Permalink |
“[...] Another aspect of Working Groups that confounds many people is the fact that there is no formal voting. The general rule on disputed topics is that the Working Group has to come to “rough consensus”, meaning that a very large majority of those who care must agree. The exact method of determining rough consensus varies from Working Group to Working Group. Sometimes consensus is determined by “humming” — if you agree with a proposal, you hum when prompted by the chair; if you disagree, you keep your silence. Newcomers find it quite peculiar, but it works. It is up to the chair to decide when the Working Group has reached rough consensus.
The lack of formal voting has caused some very long delays for some proposals, but most IETF participants who have witnessed rough consensus after acrimonious debates feel that the delays often result in better protocols. (And, if you think about it, how could you have “voting” in a group that anyone can join, and when it’s impossible to count the participants?) Rough consensus has been defined in many ways; a simple version is that it means that strongly held objections must be debated until most people are satisfied that these objections are wrong. [...]” http://www.ietf.org/tao.html
admin 11:04 on March 6, 2011 Permalink |
Daniel A. Nagy
”We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.”
13 órája · Nem tetszik ·
Oleksiy Kononov Makhno rules
13 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy While I’m sure Bat’ka would have endorsed this approach to communication standards, but the quote is actually from David D. Clark, one of the most influential Internet pioneers and is still the guiding principle of IETF, the main standards body of the Internet.
13 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy http://ietf.org/proceedings/prior29/IETF24.pdf (29 Megabytes!)
12 órája · Tetszik
Roberto Rogel Dani, after reading the English Wikipedia article on ‘rough consensus’, I realised there is contradiction in your idea. ‘We’ reject presidents and voting, but rough consensus uses a president figure (called chairperson in the article) and uses voting (called ‘a show of hands’ there). Would you argue Wikipedia’s article regarding rough consensus is totally flawed?
12 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy It is. I do have some experience in IETF decision making (participation in the OpenPGP WG, specifically the process of drafting RFC4880) and there was no show of hands or presidential decision making. Essentially, we keep arguing until nobody opposes the proposed wording at which point it gets published as a proposed standard. From that point on, it is up to actual implementations to interpret it. If there are at least two independent implementations that interoperate flawlessly on its basis and at least one of them is widely used by the community then it becomes an actual standard.
12 órája · Nem tetszik · 1 személy
Roberto Rogel It sounds great as you describe it. Can you edit the Wikipedia’s article?
12 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy I believe that the correct way to go about it using Wikipedia’s somewhat inferior process of cooperation is to write to the discussion page first. I actually might do that, but now I have more urgent (and frankly, more interesting) things to do. It involves running code.
12 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy I do believe that IETF and the Internet in general is the ultimate proof of validity of anarchist legal theory. Based on this “rough consensus and running code”, we have built the largest and most complex machine in human history: the Internet incorporates fiber-optic cables on the ocean floor several kilometers under sea level and stationary satellites 35000 km above it. While not perfect, it works remarkably well.
11 órája · Tetszik
Peter Földiák http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/ietf.html
11 órája · Tetszik · 2 ember
Roberto Rogel This topic is precisely what I wanted to ask you about long time ago: about your proposed alternative to democracy and other tyrannies of the majorities. Theoretically, it sounds like the optimum decision process, but… I was wondering about its practicallity of implementation and performance (speed of decision making) when used in very large groups (I have in mind big countries with very diverse and polarised ethnic/social/economic sub-groups.
I have in mind groups where dogma guides their behaviour/decision making. And when/where those dogmas are opposite. The only way to obtain consensus in those scenarios would be for some people to leave their religions/dogmas. And in reality, this is next to impossible. But, as an expert, please let us know whether/how this issue can be solved.
3 órája · Nem tetszik · 1 személy
Mázsa Péter [i just want to follow this thread]
2 órája · Tetszik
Peter Földiák On the large scale, you only need the market, not consensus (rough or not).
2 órája · Tetszik