On Oct 8, 2013, at 1:56 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+ietf(_at_)elandsys(_dot_)com>
wrote:
I am not sure whether hums are for a starting point or not. It can be argued
in different ways, for example, see Section 4. Humming helps to get a sense
of the room without people making a decision under duress.
Personally, I think focusing on Jeff Case's hums is missing the point. The
point is the meaning of the term "rough consensus", and how that plays out in
working group process. The manner of measurement is a secondary issue.
To my small and somewhat naive mind, the difference between rough consensus on
a topic and a vote on the same topic is something about winners and losers. In
a purely political process, when a set of parties vote on something and the
preponderance (by some definition of "preponderance") say something, the views
of the losing set of parties are deemed irrelevant. In IETF process, and
hopefully in any technical process, there is understanding that the parties who
disagree may have valid reasons to disagree, and a phase of negotiation. When
we talk about "rough consensus", I understand it to mean - and would like to
believe that we all understand it this way - that we investigate the reasons
for disagreement, perhaps discover that some of them are valid, and address
those issues to the satisfaction of those who raised them. As a result, the
ultimate solution, even though it may not be the specific solution we would all
have designed or selected, is one that in fact addresses all known issues.
While we may not all agree, we don't disagree.
I think the document on the table tries to address that. There are points of
phraseology that I might express differently, but it's close enough that I
don't disagree.
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