Hi Randy,
Otherwise we change the way the working Groups works it will remain unchanged for ever. I agree that we must get a way to vote or another democratic way to get decisions.
the goals of the ripe community are stewardship and cooperation, not voting, deciding, and "getting things done." you can look at the current us govt for a great example of why not.
if we can not come to consensus on something, then we are patient. and that's ok. we move as a cooperative community and that takes time.
yes, this becomes more complex as the community scales and becomes more diverse. and we want diversity and wide representation. so ever more patience is needed; not the means to rush to judgment.
for a large segment of the community, and that which was pretty much the original population, there is an underlying physics and shared experience of moving packets, routing, circuits, bgp, ixen, ... that gives us a common experience and understanding.
as we become more diverse, the physics of that shared experience and understanding weakens. so cooperative/consensus decision making is more complex and takes longer. welcome to a larger and mode diverse community. this is good.
but we are stewards of one internet.
it took eight, yes eight, years for me to get the ietf to change a constant from 4k to 64k (rfc 8654). so my sense of urgency may be a little different than that of others.
Thank you for writing this down so clearly, Sander