It encouraged interested parties to get involved in this process in any way they could, and noted that a number of organizations had announced meetings to discuss these issues and help to identify consensus concepts. IANA applauded all such efforts, and then went on to offer specific ideas for anyone who desired to consider these issues. At this point, it might be useful to speak to the charge that some have made that IANA, by directly offering its thoughts and suggestions to the Internet community and inviting comments on them, was somehow subverting a true public process. Most of this criticism comes from a small number of loud voices, including a small minority of those who were involved in one of the consensus-building efforts that took place over the last several months, the International Forum on the White Paper. Their complaint, as I understand it, is that anything that was done outside of the IFWP process is necessarily illegitimate, because the IFWP was the only legitimate consensus-building forum.
Several points are relevant.
First, the IFWP was explicitly designed to be a forum for discussion. The IFWP was a successful discussion venue, but it never sought to produce actual proposals for the creation of the new organization. For example, it could reasonably be argued that some or all of the IFWP meetings reached a consensus of those present that the new organization should be a membership organization. Unfortunately, none of the IFWP meetings produced any concrete suggestions, much less a consensus, on what form such a membership should take, or how it would be organized, or what role it would have in the management of the organization. It is hardly surprising that the IFWP did not produce any specific proposals or documents.