[governance] RE: organizational orientation

[Milton L Mueller]

-----Original Message-----
From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at attglobal.net]

>i know nothing 
>about the particular incident in question, 

A wiser man would refrain from comment, then.

>IETF operates as a meritocracy.

We aren't talking about IETF, George. We are talking about a public policy list for ARIN (ARIN PPML). That list is not confined to software programmers, network engineers or technical standards developers, it is intended to be open to anyone and to address public policy issues. ARIN staff spend a lot of time encouraging people to join it and participate. 

>anyone can register for and attend an IETF meeting.  
>it doesn't matter where you are from, who you work 
>for, what color, gender you are, or any other attribute 
>of your personal life and/or beliefs that have no bearing 
>on how well you think, contribute or perform.  Once 
>you are in one of its sessions, you are judged almost 
>completely by the ideas that you contribute to the 
>discussion.  If you don't know what you're talking 
>about, you'll be shut up.

Two responses. First, the incident in question, which you admit you know nothing about, proves that this is not always true. Certain individuals like Bush, known for their emotional volatility even among IETF-ers, may attempt to shut you up even if you do know what you're talking about. Indeed, that kind of reaction sometimes occurs precisely because you know more than them, or bring up an issue they have not thought of. For a few individuals, that is a situation they are not used to and don't adapt to well.  

Public policy is a topic that can be approached more or less scientifically, via the lens of law, history, economics and political science. That is where my expertise lies, and Randy Bush is in no position to assess it, much less dismiss it. But it is also true that everyone has an opinion about politics and it stirs passions. Network engineers are no more immune to prejudice and emotion in that area than any other group. They may or may not understand the legal, social, political or economic implications of what they are doing any better than an ordinary person. So from about 1996 on there has been a very severe cultural adaptation process for the Internet technical developer community, as they have been forced to come to terms with politics and with new kinds of stakeholders and different communities of knowledge, ranging from trademark lawyers to entrepreneurs to free expression advocacy groups to democracy advocates in internet governance. Some of them have managed to do this relatively gracefully (e.g., David Clark) others have not. 

Second, among this technical group it is just not true that the treatment you receive will be based entirely or even primarily on the ideas you contribute, unless perhaps those ideas are about computer science, which no one here or on the Arin PPML is discussing. IETF and the institutions that have emerged out of it have at their core a group of predominantly American and European white males, all computer scientists, who have known each other and worked together intensively for 30 years. They form a tightly-knit social network. They have their own culture. The treatment you will receive from this group depends on who you know in that group and what they say about you. Full stop. Once you get on the bad side of one or two of these people, it doesn't matter what you say or how much you know about relevant issues, you will not be listened to. You are marked as an outsider and an enemy and that's that. 

>In therms of treatment of individuals, this is one of 
>the fairest, most egalitarian groups I know.

That's because you're one of them, George. You are in no position to comment on how people who are unknown to them, have different forms of knowledge and speak a different conceptual language will be treated. 

>It believes 
>in working toward results and agreeing on the basis of 
>rough consensus and running code.  To be fair, the operational 
>test of running code is a metric more easily available in 
>science and engineering disciplines than it is in many other 
>dimensions of human affairs but it is an ideal that 
>other groups might wish to take into account.

This is the catechism, we've heard it before. As a profession of your Faith I respect it. And I certainly respect the legacy technical and operational accomplishments of that group. As you yourself sense, however, those metrics do not apply easily to political, economic and public policy contexts. And in your rush to defend the innate fairness of your group, you may have obscured the more important point Avri and I were trying to make, which is that there is a world of IG-related institutions and activities outside of the IGF, and the success of the IGF rests on integrating it with them. 

So let's all sit back and wait for Suresh's inevitable personal attack, let it pass, and then continue the dialogue on that topic.

--MM 
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