[arin-ppml] REMINDER: Proposed PDP Community Review Request

[William Herrin]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Member Services <info at arin.net> wrote:
> Your comments are requested on the proposed policy development process!
>  Please post your opinions to arin-ppml at arin.net no later than 5 PM EDT,
>  Friday, 9 May 2008.

At a glance, it looks like this proposal alters the AC's role from
being knowledge resources to being traffic cops. Everybody hates
traffic cops.

Right now, the policy development process starts with an idea, a
complaint, a hypothetical that comes as often as not from someone who
has little or no experience with ARIN. The notion finds its way to
PPML in one form or another where it gets informally bounced back and
forth and eventually coalesces into a proposal.

This is a very healthy, very bottom-up process. It contributes heavily
to ARIN's relative reputation for trustworthiness (as opposed to say,
ICANN), even though ARIN is placed in the unfortunate position of
blocking and rejecting IP address requests from organizations too
small to play (which is almost everybody).

This proposed change cuts or at best ignores that vital first step in
the policy development process. The proposed process -starts- with the
formal proposal. Do you propose to change the mailing list so that
discussion starts with a proposal that has passed the AC's first
review? Police it to assure that participants stay on topic? Limit it
so that only folks who have achieved enough expertise in ARINology can
initiate a discussion (by way of a proposal)?


It would be nice to avoid overlapping and confusing proposals, policy
text in flux even at the meetings and staff comments about the
technical soundness of a proposal that arrive too late to discuss
changes before the meeting. However, in my ever so humble opinion, we
have a Really Good Process in place already and not one of those goals
(or all of them together) is worth the RISK of damaging that process
that a significant overhaul represents.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004