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

[Loa Andersson <[e-mail]>]

All,

FWIW - my personal way of thinking about consensus vd. rough consensus,
please note that it my personal view not a definition.

Consensus - An agreement by everyone in a group that a proposed
             solution is the best of all of all possible solutions

Rough consensus - An agreement by almost everyone that the proposed
             solution is good enough for everyone to live with.

/Loa

On 2013-10-09 11:23, Melinda Shore wrote:
> 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
>

-- 


Loa Andersson                        email: [e-mail]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [e-mail]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: [phone]