Hi Pekka,
Maybe a part of the issue is that when the minute-taker is not a chair, it may be more difficult to document the result of the consensus call.
The chairs should really be making the call, announcing it in the room "looks like we have consensus on X", and asking the note takers to record this in the minutes.
But like Thomas, I prefer hand counts. You wrote:
FWIW, I personally prefer humming because my belief is that unless the rough consensus is sufficiently strong (so that it's clear no matter which part of the room you stand), the WG should probably be better off seeking better consensus than deciding that (for example) 1/3 of people voted X, and 2/3 voted for Y.
This is true. But I like hand counts for their clarity (to everyone, even those in a
different corner of the room) and the possibility of combining
them with some input from the list. But we should be careful in basing
judgements on narrow margins, just because we can count the hands
with a very high accuracy. To begin with, you have no guarantee that
the participants have really read and understood the issue, or that
they intend to implement or otherwise care about the end result. So
there is going to be some inherent inaccuracy in the polls in any case.
(And 1/3 vs. 2/3 or 1/2 vs. 1/2 are going to be tough calls, no matter whether
you used hand counts or humming! Not tough because you need to count
very accurately to find out the winner, but because you now may have to
either select a winner, introduce a delay with additional discussions, abandon
work, or develop two solutions. None of these are perfect options...)
--Jari
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