Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"

Thus spake "Sandy Wills" <sandy(_at_)WEIJax(_dot_)com>
> 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.
I think this thread long ago passed into "badly awry", hence the volume of 
responses.
> >     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.
Very true for the original post, but once one person (or, in the instant 
case, a couple dozen) has argued with the OP, there is no way to determine 
which side the silent majority agrees with.  It is possible that there are 
thousands of people agree with Yakov but have cultural prohibitions on 
backing him, or it could be that there are thousands that don't agree but 
have no new points to add -- or both.  All we can measure are the people who 
do speak up.
Right now it looks like there is a very strong consensus against MS Word as 
an output format, a weaker one against it as an input format, and no real 
consensus yet about other options like HTML, OpenDoc, PDF/A, etc.
IMHO, the normative output text should remain the ASCII version, perhaps 
with UTF-8 to allow authors to add a native rendering of their name.  Any 
other output versions should be optional and explicitly non-normative. 
Input forms should remain the same as today plus optional UTF-8.  I think 
that's about as "progressive" as we'll likely build consensus for any time 
soon.  The bad artwork that this saddles us with is, IMHO, a feature and not 
a bug.
S

Stephen Sprunk        "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723           people.  Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS         smart people who disagree with them."  --Aaron Sorkin 

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