On Jun 24, 2011, at 12:18 PM, RJ Atkinson wrote:
Consensus in the IETF has NEVER been a numbers game,
counting merely the public postings. The IETF doesn't vote.
Just counting the numbers of public postings would be voting,
and this organisation has made a quite explicit decision
NOT to vote.
It's true in many ways that IETF does not vote. Last Call inputs are not
limited to strictly yea or nay; and there are no well-defined criteria for when
an action has sufficient support (or lack thereof) from participants.
At the same time, when evaluating consensus, it's often useful to do a count of
the number of approvals vs. objections. Anytime there is a significant number
of objections, "rough consensus" is in doubt.
Sometimes when weeding through a long exchange of emails, it's hard to get a
sense of just what the balance is without doing an actual count. Actually
counting names helps remove some kinds of bias, e.g. the tendency to count
opinions with which one agrees, more than those with which one disagrees.
But even counting is an approximate process. Not all responses are entirely
yea or nay, and sometimes peoples' opinions shift as the conversation
progresses. (which, IMO, is a good sign.)
Keith
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