Re: Last Call: <draft-resnick-on-consensus-05.txt> (On Consensus and Humming in the IETF) to Informational RFC

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 10/8/13 3:21 PM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
> To my small and somewhat naive mind, the difference between rough
> consensus on a topic and a vote on the same topic is something about
> winners and losers. In a purely political process, when a set of
> parties vote on something and the preponderance (by some definition
> of "preponderance") say something, the views of the losing set of
> parties are deemed irrelevant. In IETF process, and hopefully in any
> technical process, there is understanding that the parties who
> disagree may have valid reasons to disagree, and a phase of
> negotiation. When we talk about "rough consensus", I understand it to
> mean - and would like to believe that we all understand it this way -
> that we investigate the reasons for disagreement, perhaps discover
> that some of them are valid, and address those issues to the
> satisfaction of those who raised them. As a result, the ultimate
> solution, even though it may not be the specific solution we would
> all have designed or selected, is one that in fact addresses all
> known issues. While we may not all agree, we don't disagree.

I've done a lot of work on consensus over the years and I think
this is fundamentally correct, although I'd amend the last sentence
to something along the lines of "While we may not all agree, those
who disagree can live with it."  That is to say, it's not a binary
question, and sometimes things we disagree with just aren't
showstoppers.  (I'd like to see people take that position more
often - for some reason a lot of people seem to take disagreement
as a reason to block a decision even when it doesn't matter that
much).

Melinda