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Re: Last Call: <draft-resnick-on-consensus-05.txt> (On Consensus and Humming in the IETF) to Informational RFC

2013-10-09 00:21:52
All,

FWIW - my personal way of thinking about consensus vd. rough consensus,
please note that it my personal view not a definition.

Consensus - An agreement by everyone in a group that a proposed
            solution is the best of all of all possible solutions

Rough consensus - An agreement by almost everyone that the proposed
            solution is good enough for everyone to live with.

/Loa

On 2013-10-09 11:23, Melinda Shore wrote:
On 10/8/13 3:21 PM, Fred Baker (fred) wrote:
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've done a lot of work on consensus over the years and I think
this is fundamentally correct, although I'd amend the last sentence
to something along the lines of "While we may not all agree, those
who disagree can live with it."  That is to say, it's not a binary
question, and sometimes things we disagree with just aren't
showstoppers.  (I'd like to see people take that position more
often - for some reason a lot of people seem to take disagreement
as a reason to block a decision even when it doesn't matter that
much).

Melinda


--


Loa Andersson                        email: 
loa(_at_)mail01(_dot_)huawei(_dot_)com
Senior MPLS Expert                          loa(_at_)pi(_dot_)nu
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

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