Re: Beyond reproach, accountability and regulation

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 03:26:02PM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote:
> I was very dissatisfied with the IETF's performance towards its agenda
> until this occurred to me.  It would have helped me immensely if it
> were formally identified in this way (but then that would require the
> IETF carry a 'Philosophy Area'), and to some extent I imagine that
> this is also the problem some of the IETF's more vocal detractors are
> wrestling with; the belief that the IETF does or should follow a
> Socratic, Aristotelian, or even Democratic methodology, and the
> resulting confusion and hurt feelings to discover that blatantly
> Sophist rhetoric has succeeded where their deductions or even
> elections have failed.

That's a rather interesting, and dare I say it, insightful way of
looking at it.  Maybe (and I'm only half saying this in jest) "Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" should mentioned as recommended
reading to the "Tao of the IETF" --- and that what we are after, is
"Quality" in our standards.  

Quoting from a description of that book:

   Much of the book focuses on a rather surprising topic: quality. We
   think of quality as a measure of a product or a person, and we feel
   the right to make judgments about it because it is clear when
   something is of quality or is not. The narrator recounts taking his
   motorcycle to a workshop and reluctantly handing it over to a crew
   of young men playing loud music. Instead of fixing the machine,
   they butcher it, and he learns a lesson: it is the attitude towards
   a technological problem, not simply rational knowledge of how a
   thing works, that makes all the difference. Merely going by the
   manual is a clumsy, low-quality approach. Thereafter, he did the