The other consequence is that the membership takes on the responsibility for ARIN's actions. Not the staff's actions, but ARIN's actions. If there is any dysfunction in ARIN, I suspect that it lay here.
Yes, this is what I believe. The ARIN membership is more passive than I think is healthy for the organization. Thus, the organization is dysfunctional.
I want to make it clear that any lack of change or innovation is not something that the staff has caused.
I'm not knocking the staff. And I'm also not suggesting that people should pester the staff if they want ARIN to act on something. The Board of Trustees is responsible for instructing the staff to act, and therefore, ARIN members and others should either communicate directly with the Trustees, or through the public policy process. However, this public policy process is itself suffering as the result of extremely low involvement by ARIN members and by other interested parties.
But, the point is taken that ARIN would be much more "useful" to the Internet if there was a change in participation.
Point taken. My goal is to see more participation so that more diverse viewpoints are involved in the discussion. When there are only a handful of people making all the decisions, then it is much easier to make mistakes, to misunderstand the situation, and to be blind to possibilities. Democractic oversight and review cannot happen when the number of people involved is very low.
But a lot of times people confuse the ARIN staff with the ARIN membership organization.
That's why I didn't mention the staff and repeatedly pointed the finger at the apathy of the IP network operators who form ARIN's membership. --Michael Dillon