/\
Consensus: ____/ \___
/\
Rough Consensus ____/ \___/\___
Badly phrased question: ___/\____/\____/\____/\___
Right. Like most techniques, "voting" is a tool. And like any tool, it
can be misused, or ineffective.
Voting breaks down when it is used avoid finding true consensus, and
is instead used to just make a decision and move on -- regardless of
whether the decision made is actually a well-considered one. It is
this area the IETF needs to avoid falling into.
Personally, I'm more in favor of "votes" than just hums, the reason
being that a count of hands is unambiguous data. In contrast, the
results of a hum are more subject to interpretation, where one's
perspective of the results of a hum may well depend on which side of
the room one happens to be sitting. And if one reads from the WG
minutes that "the hum said x", one really can't challenge what that
means, becuase there is no agreed-upon data on which to draw
conclusions from. In contrast, with a count of hands, it's much harder
to argue that 100 to 20 "vote" is not strong support for a particular
direction. Likewise, a "vote" of 5 to 2 says something pretty
significant too, i.e., serious lack of participation.
Thomas
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