> Re: Voting Idea? (Was: Last Call: 'Requirements for IETF DraftSubmission Toolset' to Informational RFC) > Date: 2005-04-06 09:12 > From: Brian E Carpenter <brc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > The free site I found says "voting"; of course, what the IETF > can use such things for is only straw polls. But in a case > like the present one, I think that is a reasonable way of > finding out what the centre of gravity of opinion is. > > In ASCII art: > /\ > Consensus: ____/ \___ > > /\ > Rough Consensus ____/ \___/\___ > > > Badly phrased question: ___/\____/\____/\____/\___ > > (I'm reasonably serious about that) Maybe -- maybe not. Here's what one IETF WG chair had to say (where "this topic" refers to a specific issue under discussion in the WG): ---------------------- On the topic of voting: Especially on this topic, I think voting would be stupid. The decision is about rough consensus. One screaming person does not indicate that there is no rough consensus, but one or two well-reasoned arguments against a screaming huge crowd does. And a huge number of "I'd prefer X, but I couldn't care less" votes versus 2 or 3 well-argued "X will spell doom for the Internet, and Y will save it" votes *is* rough consensus for Y over X. So voting generally doesn't help me decide one way or the other that there is rough consensus. ----------------------- In short, quality of argument trumps (if the chair is chairing) quantity. Voting (incl. as "straw polls") only measures quantity, not quality. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf