[arin-ppml] ARIN-2013-4: RIR Principles / Request for General Thoughts

[Jimmy Hess]

On 6/10/13, Tony Hain <alh-ietf at tndh.net> wrote:
> Chris,     [snip]
> starting point, it might make more sense to have Arin hire a professional
> survey developer to create the questions for an "unbiased about the
> outcome"  > manner as possible.

Professional survey developers are expensive,  and we don't need for
membership fees to go up for more expensive policy development,
requiring professional survey developers.    It's also important to
understand,  that any survey conducted on PPML mailing lists will
suffer selection bias,  causing the outcome to potentially deviate
from the actual view of the larger RIR community,   so there can't be
an entirely unbiased survey here;   even if the questions are
perfectly unbiased,  a survey conducted on the mailing list would have
some inherent bias.

I would say what it really means is that simple "Yes" answers,  cannot
legitimately be interpreted as a show of support for the policy draft;
 or its current text,   unless that was also asserted by the
respondent.

A simple "Yes"  to (1) for example,  may be merely a show in favor of
sustainability as a principal;   after the respondant scans the
question,  and sees the word sustainability in there,  which imparts a
certain emotional context for the reader.

A prevailing idea;  "Justified need" and  "conservation"   are just
passive riders,  that the simple "Yes"  respondent doesn't necessarily
support   but  has to accept by default when saying "Yes";   and
doesn't distinguish them without spending extra labor, time, and
energy, to further elaborate.

Furthermore, they are all framed as Yes/No questions,  where "Yes" is
deemed to be "Recommended",  or  "Constructive",  which is equated
with good.


Which goes along the same lines as  "Developing policy is
constructive,"  and therefore deemed good,  even if, perhaps the
effect of the policy is not so great.


Meanwhile "Not adopting policy"  is deemed as non-constructive, and
therefore labelled as "bad",   even, if perhaps,  not adopting policy
might be the  more favorable outcome for the community, for now.


> Tony
--
-JH