Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"

Gray, Eric wrote:

> "It is much more likely to hear from the very vocal people who are 
>  opposed to the change. That is, assuming 1000s of participants 
>  on the IETF discussion list, perhaps 20 expressed 'nays', even 
>  strong nays, could be considered a clear consensus in favor of 
>  change."
While I can't speak for everyone else, this seems correct to me.  "Do I 
have anything useful or enteresting to add?" and "Do I think that my 
input will change the output?" must both evaluate to "Yes" before I post 
to any discussion.  I occasionally post for humor or interest, but 
generally I follow the discussion and stay out of it unless I believe it 
to be going badly awry.
  To be blunt, do we want every question to be answered by several 
thousand AOL "Me too"'s?  The silent masses are silent because they 
don't have anything useful to add, and believe that an endless stream of 
agreements would do nothing useful except test our bandwidth.
  We do, on the other hand, chime in when necessary.  So, it is "good" 
and "right" and "fair" to assume that a public question with a default 
answer has concensus, if the only response is a minor negative one.  I, 
and I believe many others, will simply move on to the next post when we 
see the question, if we agree with the default answer.
  A simple mental experiment: If we have, say, 2000 readers, and we 
post the question
  "Will the sun rise tomorrow?  We think yes."

 then we can expect a small number of disagreements, a small number of 
arguments from readers who didn't understand the question, a small 
number of AOL's, a small number of "Of course, you twit!  Why are you 
wasting our time with this?" and nothing else.  The vast majority of the 
readers will not reply, because they agree with the default answer, and 
they have other things to do.
  If there is a reader who disagrees in his mind, but is constrained by 
cultural conditioning or natural manners from speaking out, how are we 
supposed to coax his "better way" from this reader?  We have already 
posited that he/she/it won't speak up.
  I submit that the IETF culture should, by policy, assume that anyone 
subscribed to an IETF list will speak out on any question if he/she/it 
thinks it right.
>     The current process requires weighing of voices, not weighing
> of the supposed opinions of the silent.
Yes, _but_ anyone who agrees will not argue.  You will only get argument 
from those who disagree with the post.  Unless you want to change the 
culture here to require an answer from every reader, on every question, 
thus adding significantly to our daily workload.  I'd rather not.
--
Unable to locate coffee.
Operator halted.


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