[arin-ppml] ARIN-2012-3: ASN Transfers - Last Call

[Owen DeLong]

On May 7, 2012, at 2:29 PM, William Herrin wrote:

> On 5/7/12, Robert E. Seastrom <ppml at rs.seastrom.com> wrote:
>> The AC not only pays attention to and respects minority points of
>> view, but we _go out of our way to consider them_.  It sounds as if
>> Mr. Herrin believes that a whiff of dissent ought to be a cue for a
>> bad case of analysis paralysis.  I for one disagree.
> 
> Robert,
> 
> Yes, the AC carefully considers dissenting viewpoints before
> classifying them as wrong or otherwise unworthy of inclusion.
> 

Bill,
I think you are drawing an utterly unfair conclusion here and
stating it as fact.

> If you want the community to own the policies then a non-trivial
> amount of dissent means you keep discussing it. That's the nature of
> consensus and if you want the disparate members of the community to
> engage as ARIN's partners in address management, that's what it takes.

While having true consensus would be ideal, it's not always feasible.
In some cases, the AC has to weigh whether failing to move a proposal
with significant support forward would do a greater harm than continuing
to discuss it.

It is a valid criticism that there has been some tendency towards a tyranny
of the majority of late and that the AC has trended in some cases towards
mistaking majority support for consensus. However, even in times of such
errors, I do not feel that the AC has discounted, ignored, or otherwise
disenfranchised any dissenting views presented in the public record.

> If community input in to the policies is important but community
> ownership of the resulting policies is not, then you can push policies
> over objections based on expert analysis. However, that eventually
> sets ARIN up for an adversarial relationship with the community rather
> than a cooperative one. The folks who internalize rules set by 15
> people on a committee are largely comprised of the 15 people on the
> committee. If that many.

Community ownership is definitely important and I challenge you to
provide specific examples of "pushing policies over objections based
on expert analysis".

The last sentence just doesn't parse for me, so I'm not sure what you
were intending to say.

> I cast too wide a net when I disparaged the entire AC for incautiously
> pushing past dissent. Fact is several of the folks on the AC have been
> doing their level headed best to be broadly inclusive. By doing things
> like voting to keep the instant proposal in discussion due to the
> significant dissent. To them I tip my hat. Sadly you're not a voting
> majority. But keep trying; it's worth the fight.

I don't know which side of that divider you would cast me on. I suspect
that there have been instances where I could land on either side,
depending on the proposal in question. I know that I voted to abandon
some proposals that you held dear early in the process. In each of those
cases, failing to abandon would have left the proposal in limbo for another
policy cycle without providing the option to petition. Since the proposals
were pretty strongly opposed on the list and had minimal support, I felt
the most honest thing to do at the time was abandon and let you petition
if you felt strongly about them.

In any case, I do not take my voting responsibilities on the AC lightly and
I believe that the AC has consistently acted in good faith as a body to
achieve what we truly believed was the most desirable outcome for
the community. (I define most desirable as a combination of factors,
including will of the community, technical soundness, usefulness
of the policy/proposal, preservation of good stewardship of resources,
etc.)

Owen