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Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"

2006-01-06 08:51:29
"Spencer" == Spencer Dawkins <spencer(_at_)mcsr-labs(_dot_)org> writes:

    Spencer> So... here's the problem.
    >> Personally, I object to the suggestion that my "vote" should be
    >> counted one way or another if I am silent.  At most, it should
    >> be counted as "no strong opinion".  Or should I now start
    >> responding to all the Last Calls with "I don't care about this,
    >> so please don't count me as supporting it"?

    Spencer> Our technology support for "do we have consensus"
    Spencer> stinks. We ask for feedback to a mailing list, knowing
    Spencer> that "me, too" postings are (and should be) discouraged
    Spencer> in most shared e-mail environments. What we get is
    Spencer> exactly what you described - postings from a non-random
    Spencer> subset of participants, and then we try to figure out
    Spencer> what the sampling error is, and in which direction, based
    Spencer> on not a lot more information. There is a safety
    Spencer> mechanism, because when we REALLY miscount we can be
    Spencer> appealed, but we don't use it often, and it's really an
    Spencer> expensive mechanism to use.

I'm not sure I consider this very broken.  If I'm reading a last call
and I have opinions that differ from the way the discussion is going,
I'm certainly going to speak up.  It seems to work fairly well in
practice at determining rough consensus when there is a rough
consensus to be determined.  It gives questionable results in cases
where the results are questionable; I'm not sure this a bug.

    Spencer> some way to let people say "you know, I just don't care",
    Spencer> that would help, too.

And what do we do with those people anyway?  How would it help me to
know there are 30 people who don't care?


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