Sam,
It is useful sometimes to differentiate those who have
no stake in a particular issue from those who are not paying
attention. Sometimes (maybe most of the time) it is not a
very important distinction, and the IETF treats it this way
all of the time. Maybe that's the right way to go. Maybe not.
--
Eric
--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org]
--> On Behalf Of Sam Hartman
--> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 10:51 AM
--> To: Spencer Dawkins
--> Cc: IETF General Discussion Mailing List
--> Subject: Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"
-->
--> >>>>> "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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