I see this area as important. Well I would! And I am not giving up right now. But what to others think?
In Copenhagen and Bucharest, I raised this issue with a few people privately – "what is the role of Coop to you, and is there an unaddressed space that it needs to extend into?" I had assumed from the outset that the lull of the mailing list would be problematic, but instead most people seemed to see the group as a space in involve other communities and create room for discussions that would not otherwise fall under existing WGs. It seems that people overall were satisfied with the WG's primary activity taking place at the RIPE meetings, and the sessions spill into the break time because there is such a vibrant discussion.
So, I would frame it less as a existential question about the need for the group and pose the question as: are there unaddressed needs that future co-chairs should encourage more active participation in?
As for my own silence on the role of the co-chair, that's a product of the process. As Jim had rightly noted last week, there was some semblance of a timeframe that I had proposed but had not been followed. Had it been, rather than opening space for discussion, by June 1, and in fact in the midst of the Copenhagen meeting, there had been already a determination made by a fair amount of people about preferences. As such, that was effective as disincentivizing any further discussion from those who had offered their names, and hence quiet.