Binary choices, polling and so on (Re: objection to proposed change to "consensus")

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(changing the subject since the subject is changed...)

--On fredag, januar 06, 2006 23:11:10 -0500 Sandy Wills <sandy@xxxxxxxxxx> 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 wouldn't call it "religious", but it's part of the package deal that allows us to get away with not having members, and being very hard to take over effectively...... as soon as there's a set of rules, and a mechanistic method for deciding on the outcome of a decision, the price of buying an IETF decision becomes a known quantity instead of a "you might try, but you're unlikely to get away with it if someone catches you" uncertainty.

That said... I like opinion polls, of various forms, and use them frequently (some would say "too frequently"... I guess I've demonstrated most of the bad sides of opinion polls over the years...). In the good cases, they allow us to quickly and clearly distinguish the pattern of opponents and proponents. In the bad case, they confirm what we already knew - that the group is deadlocked and unable to make a decision.

That's the time to pull out Ted Hardie's RFC 3929 and look for some alternate methods - majority voting isn't listed there, and for good reason.

                      Harald





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