IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

[Avri Doria]

On 23 May 2012, at 11:13, Andrea Glorioso wrote:

I found your example-ad-absurdum with acronyms to be LOL though not quite ROTFL.

Actually though, I am rather fond of Multistakeholder Participatory Democracy (MPD) and plan to use the phrase and the acronym more frequently.  I think it is so much better than MSH. (which I pronounce Mesh but others pronounce Mush - an acronym should not be so easy to politicize by pronunciation)

Also I beleive that acronyms that are longer than 3-4 letters lose their value as they get longer, as most people cannot remember the string in its proper ordering.

> For the time being, I concluded there is hope, since some civil servants and some IETF participants do seem to have something in common, namely the (forced?) passion for acronyms -

The names are often so long and ungainly that acronyms are useful. 

> I am currently writing an NtF for a pre-JF with the CAB in which the LTT for the SC of next week will be discussed. I kid you not, these are all real acronyms in an eurocrat daily life and I welcome you to try and guess what they mean. :)


Well I beleive that proper writing should include full expansion, or at least a reference, on first use in a document that might be read by non insiders, (-: that may even be IETF policy for Internet Drafts (ID) and other documents like Request for Comments (RFC - though in this case the acronym may be more than the fully spelled out version)).  

I can't guess what your acronyms mean, but if you forgive my presumption, I now understand why you are engaging in this debate on IGC: work avoidance - one of my prime immediate motivators, beyond the general belief in the importance of such topics, for extended political discussions on email lists.

> I did, however, question in a very socratic sense (VSS), being myself at the ignorant side of the relationship, whether and how the IETF model could be applied to public policy making (PPM); as well as which kind of objective metrics one could use to analyse all of the above (AOTA), rather than relying on the say-so of anyone.

Always awed in the presence of a Socratic teacher, but it brings out the rebel in me. Parmenides was one of my heroes in the dialogues.

I think that finding reasonable ways, perhaps metrics, of analyzing the usefulness of a particular MPD model for a particular purpose is indeed a good task.  In looking at organization, and in terms of analyzing them, I know that I naturally apply several criteria in deciding whether various aspects of a model can be reasonably applied to a solution in another problem space.  This is, in fact a very similar process I use to decide whether a protocol can be repurposed* or whether components of that protocol can be 'borrowed'.

So for the IETF, I think the exercise would involve breaking down the IETF into some of its component parts, e.g. rough consensus, working groups, standard development process, types of appeal mechanism, leadership progression, capacity building mechanisms, methods of picking leaders and their term limits, forms of communication, relationship of leadership to the body politic  etc...  Some of these are more effective than others and some of these are mechanisms are useful in other organizations.  I don't think any thinks that the IETF, or any other organization, is the one size fits all pattern for all other organizations, it is just that in creating other forms of MPD I think it offers some good clue.

The exercise might also include a look at the mission, (In the IETF case part of which in my own words) is to act as  a steward to the internet by designing and maintaining protocols that allow the Internet to continue to grow according to the Internet's generative nature, and the degree to which it meets that mission.  Has the IETF succeeded in producing and maintaing protocols that have allowed the internet to thrive and grow?  Is there perhaps another model we can compare its success to:  how does it compare to the ITU, W3C, IEEE, ETSI ... and others (in some cases perhaps better/worse than others).  We can apply this same type of analysis to any organization from the EC to the local rugby or knitting society)

As for the degree for how objective these metrics can be, that would probably involve another spirited discussion on the epistemological balance between subjectivity and objectivity or human psychological ability to distinguish between the two. I would also bring us into discussion of well formed theories of  evidence, both anecdotal and statistical.

But I have some work I really should do.


avri


* an aside, as a protocol designer, one of the greatest joys in life  for me is discovering that a protocol i participated in designing is being repurposed to solve a problem that never even occurred to the designers.  I think of this as success.  Is this a metric?  the same goes for using an organizational structure that I participated in creating being applied to other organization problems. (No, I am _not_ saying I participated in creating IETF, I was there early, but not that early).  for example, i think it is hard to beat the 3-way handshake (hello, hello to you too, oh thanks for responding to my hello or I beleive X..., you said you beleive X..., yes - that is indeed what I meant when I said X...) as a protocol element.


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