On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Dave Cridland <dave(_at_)cridland(_dot_)net>
wrote:
Calls for adoption are particularly interesting cases, because if there's no
response, then as chairman I have to assume there's no interest. This could
be because of lack of time, of course, but if merely checking the draft over
for adoption isn't worthy of effort, then I can't really expect that once
adopted, people will suddenly find the time to do serious work.
In other cases, however, silence can mean assent, or at least no interest in
arguing against. If a particular open issue in a draft is resolved by a
small group (or even a single person) picking a solution that works for
them, then an absence of complaints, despite not being quite the same, nor
as desirable, as enthusiastic and vocal support, still leads to the same
conclusion.
One thing I've seen in WGs that I like is if there is a lot of
silence, the chair says what s/he assumes silence implies. "If you're
silent, I'm going to assume that means you don't have any objection",
etc.