Subject: [edu-team] [Fwd: [Melinda Shore] Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"]

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:00:08 +0100

Food for EDU thought...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Melinda Shore] Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 11:56:51 -0500
From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]

I tend to strongly agree with this and the current ietf discussion has
caused me to believe that perhaps a lot of WG chairs really do need
training in consensus process.

Subject: Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus"
From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
To: Sandy Wills <[email-masked]>, IETF General Discussion Mailing List <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:14:38 -0500
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>

On 1/6/06 11:11 PM, "Sandy Wills" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>     Unfortunately, there seems to be a religious dogma among the
> long-time IETF participants that they never take votes.  All they
> do is judge rough or smooth concensus, and that reduces our options
> to simple binary choices.  Thus, my attempt to create a binary
> method for asserting and testing a claim of concensus.

I think part of the problem we're having with decision making (to
the extent that we're having a problem with decision-making) is that
too many people really don't understand consensus at all.  Consensus
process leads to decisions being made through synthesis and
restatement, and by the time that the question is asked "Do we have
consensus?" we should pretty much have consensus already.  Consensus
is not a form of voting with overwhelming results, and I think that's
where you're going somewhat far afield.

Sometimes I think the IETF should change its decision-making processes -
if nothing else, consensus-style decision-making doesn't work that
well when some number of participants don't share the same investment
in the process itself.  But even so, I think better training of both
participants and chairs would probably solve the bulk of the problems
that have come up and should be tried before the organization gives
serious consideration to changing how decisions are made.

Melinda

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