> /\ > Consensus: ____/ \___ > /\ > Rough Consensus ____/ \___/\___ > Badly phrased question: ___/\____/\____/\____/\___ Right. Like most techniques, "voting" is a tool. And like any tool, it can be misused, or ineffective. Voting breaks down when it is used avoid finding true consensus, and is instead used to just make a decision and move on -- regardless of whether the decision made is actually a well-considered one. It is this area the IETF needs to avoid falling into. Personally, I'm more in favor of "votes" than just hums, the reason being that a count of hands is unambiguous data. In contrast, the results of a hum are more subject to interpretation, where one's perspective of the results of a hum may well depend on which side of the room one happens to be sitting. And if one reads from the WG minutes that "the hum said x", one really can't challenge what that means, becuase there is no agreed-upon data on which to draw conclusions from. In contrast, with a count of hands, it's much harder to argue that 100 to 20 "vote" is not strong support for a particular direction. Likewise, a "vote" of 5 to 2 says something pretty significant too, i.e., serious lack of participation. Thomas _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf