Hello;
The trouble with voting (as opposed to straw polls)
in a setting such as this is that it opens
the door for vote packing, which I have seen happen in other
organizations, with very bad results.
If anyone who comes can vote, what's to stop Company XYZ from
sending enough people to the WG meeting to make sure that the
vote goes its way ? Nothing, as things stand now. Preventing that
would require a lot more formality, such as registered members,
company memberships, one vote per company, etc., obviously a
profound change for the IETF. Moving to
voting without doing that will eventually lead to disaster.
So, I would vote not to move to voting.
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 08:05:25 -0400
Margaret Wasserman <margaret(_at_)thingmagic(_dot_)com> wrote:
Hi All,
I agree with what Thomas is saying below, with on clarification...
At 7:27 AM -0400 4/7/05, Thomas Narten wrote:
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.
I think that hand-raising or mailing list straw polling is a better
technique to get data about the response to a particular question,
because it is less ambiguous and less prone to vagaries of
interpretation. Getting a somewhat accurate count of the opinions
expressed in the room also makes it possible to follow RFC 2418 which
says:
In the case where a consensus which has been reached during a face-
to-face meeting is being verified on a mailing list the people who
were in the meeting and expressed agreement must be taken into
account. If there were 100 people in a meeting and only a few people
on the mailing list disagree with the consensus of the meeting then
the consensus should be seen as being verified.
I, personally, lack the ability to quantify a "hum" and compare it to
the number of people who respond to a mailing list poll.
I do not think that the difference between a "straw poll" and
"voting" lies in how you count the respondents, I think that the
difference lies in what you do with the results.
Voting is used to _make_ the decision. In voting, there is a defined
majority (more than half, more than two-thirds, etc.) that is needed
to make a specific decision, and difficult decisions may be made by
one vote. To be done fairly, voting also requires quorum and
eligibility rules.
In the IETF, we use straw polls to get a sense of how many people in
the room have an opinion on a particular topic, and whether there is
a consensus of opinion among those people. IETF decisions are seldom
black-and-white, sometimes there are a spectrum of choices available.
After a poll, the chair may ask those who voted in the minority to
state their reasons for doing so, in an attempt to find a compromise
and/or place on the spectrum that will gain consensus.
This is quite different than making a decision by voting, regardless
of how the straw poll is conducted (hand-raising, humming, web
"voting" tools).
Margaret
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