At 09:45 PM 10/8/2002, Hans Petter Holen wrote:
My diagnosis is that there is to little participation from the community.
This is not only the RIPE NCCs fault. This could be a community failiure, process failiure, or even failiure of the chair of this wg or something else.
Hans Petter, this diagnosis is a difficult one. I have been worrying about this 'problem' ever since RIPE meetings have grown beyond 50 attenders. And I have been very concerned, to the point of being distressed, about the lack of a vivid discussion many times. Rob is my witness. After a while he developed quite some routine to calm me down on these occasions. ;-) I am now convinced that one cannot do more than provide an open forum and bring the important issues to the table together with proposals how to deal wit them. If there is no big discussion, implement things as proposed and do not waste too much energy worrying whether there was enough discussion. Take the lack of discussion as a vote of confidence. I understand that anyone who is committed to open discussion, such as yourself, will sometimes have the feeling that there is too much confidence expressed by lack of discussion. That is true. But one cannot do more than provide the forum and offer every opportunity for discussion. If the community has too much confidence there is little one can do about it. Either it is justified or it is not, but worrying about it is wasting energy. Daniel