Hi Pete,
I was musing on draft-resnick-on-consensus-01. In the Section 1:
"We don't require full consensus; that would allow a single
intransigent person who simply keeps saying "No!" to stop
the process cold. We only require rough consensus: If the
chair of a working group determines that a technical issue
brought forward by an objector has been truly considered by
the working group ..."
The above is about working group consensus. I suggest adding some
text in the Introduction Section which mentions that it is about
that. The "We only require rough consensus" can be misunderstood as
being the bar in an IETF-wide call.
"Participants ask, "Why are we bothering with this 'humming'
thing? Wouldn't a show of hands be easier?"
The IAB recently had a discussion about "bottom-up organizational
modes". If I am not mistaken (please correct me) the IETF is the
only organization that uses "humming". I would say that it works in
the IETF as it is part of the culture; it cannot be grafted on an
organization. There are cases when a show of hands can be used. The
sentence that follows the quoted text explains when to use "humming".
In Section 2:
"The key is to separate those choices that are simply unappealing
from those that are truly problematic."
I leave it to you to see whether you want to use the following:
"Any attempt to determine consensus is difficult if the issues
are technical,
economic and political. Impassioned discussion, with little
technical content,
leads to an impass. It is up to the chair to tease apart the
points and find
out how to reduce the amount people disagree on. Find the bounds of the
conversation. Separate out the technical issues."
Credits to Ralph Droms for the above.
'This also brings up an important point about reaching consensus:
Consensus does not really involve compromising. "Compromising"
implies that there remains something wrong with the outcome, but
that the objector has simply given up.'
I read "compromise" as something intermediate between two
things. Consensus is used for conflict resolution. It's not
possible to resolve an issue if the two sides are not ready to
compromise. If you have two sides you end up with a King Solomon
scenario. It is very difficult to resolve the issue then. Maybe
"conciliatory" may be a better term to express the idea (see text
quoted above).
The draft uses "objection" and "objector" in discussing about
consensus. That works in a formal or legalistic context. In an IETF
context you end up being the person standing out as you raised an
objection. Arguments do not have to be for or against
(objection). It's difficult for me to find the words to explain
this. I see that you used the word "concerns" in Section 4.
In Section 3:
"If the chair finds, in their technical judgement, that the issue
has truly been considered, and that the vast majority of the working"
Is it "technical judgement" or "the technical issue has been
considered"? For the former, the chair ends up taking a technical
decision. For the latter, the chair only has to use judgement.
"that the vast majority of the working group has come to the conclusion
that the tradeoff is worth making"
If you consider the arguments instead you don't have to get into
majority and minority.
"Now, a conclusion of only rough consensus relies heavily on the good
judgement of the consensus caller..."
I like that paragraph.
RFC 3929 broaches consensus from a different angle. I'll highlight
the following: "There must be a clear statement of the decision to be
reached". The decision process used to get there is based on
consensus. However, it is not easy to attain consensus. Rough
consensus is the lesser barrier when consensus is not possible. In
other words rough consensus is not the default choice (re: rough
consensus and running code). The draft explains that by using
"single intransigent person" as an example. Section 2 discusses
about lack of disagreement. Lack of disagreement can also be a sign
that the working group has not carefully considered the question.
It is not possible to reach consensus on the musings in the
draft. I'll pick a sentence: "it is a good solution to a real
problem, even if the non-experts don't have the ability to fully
judge the details". There is a theory that the good solution would
be chosen by a group which includes a significant number of
non-experts. If the questions being asked are too complex, it can
end up with the wrong decision being taken. If the group is
segmented (e.g. multishareholder :-)), it can lead to a biased decision.
There are different types of consensus; e.g. the consensus of the
girls, which is unappealable.
Regards,
-sm