I wasn't making any suggestion about what we should be doing. My sole point was that as the language differs, we should be aware of that and word accordingly, i.e. not use phrases like "simple majority" to mean 51%, as it may not. -- Christopher Dearlove Senior Principal Engineer, Communications Group Communications, Networks and Image Analysis Capability BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre West Hanningfield Road, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, CM2 8HN, UK Tel: +44 1245 242194 | Fax: +44 1245 242124 chris.dearlove@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx | http://www.baesystems.com BAE Systems (Operations) Limited Registered Office: Warwick House, PO Box 87, Farnborough Aerospace Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU, UK Registered in England & Wales No: 1996687 -----Original Message----- From: Martin Rex [mailto:mrex@xxxxxxx] Sent: 07 October 2013 21:56 To: Dearlove, Christopher (UK) Cc: dcrocker@xxxxxxxx; Pete Resnick; IETF Discussion Subject: Re: Review of: draft-resnick-on-consensus-05 ----------------------! WARNING ! ---------------------- This message originates from outside our organisation, either from an external partner or from the internet. Keep this in mind if you answer this message. Follow the 'Report Suspicious Emails' link on IT matters for instructions on reporting suspicious email messages. -------------------------------------------------------- Dearlove, Christopher (UK) wrote: > dcrocker@xxxxxxxx >> >> From what you've written, your basic point seems to be that 51% isn't >> enough; it's worth making that explicit. > > To add to the confusion, and to emphasise the point about making clear, > British and American English differ here. If three proposals (not the > most common case, I agree, but it can happen) have 45%, 35% and 20% > of the votes, the first of these has a majority, sometimes emphasised > as simple majority, in British English. (We do not - to our loss - use > the word plurality. Just 51% is given the strong term absolute majority.) > I haven't checked the context here, but saying not just a simple > majority might suggest to a British English user that 51% is enough. Voting as is done in elections for political parties is often going to produce a political result, a personal preference of a few rather than an engineering solution that adequately addresses the concerns of the community at large. What we could do in the IETF, is not just trying to pick the lesser evil, but rather use the _engineering_ skills to modify and/or merge proposals to increase the number of folks that support the result and reduce the amount of folks that object the result. With your example of three competing proposals: A, B and C, and by couting "votes" the WG chair determine support of 45%, 35% and 20% respectively, does this mean that A has signficant support? Not at all. It could be that the folks who voted for B and C did so because they are both strongly opposed to A. A WG chair who wants to be neutral on the decision should probably not just call: which of the three proposals do you prefer: A, B or C and perform political inferences on the result, but rather _ask_ the engineers direclty: if we were to select A, would you "support it, are neutral, are opposed" if you're either neutral or opposed to A, what change(s) to A would make you supportive for A? if we were to select B, would you "support it, are neutral, are opposed" if you're either neutral or opposed to A, what change(s) to A would make you supportive for B? if we were to select C, would you "support it, are neutral, are opposed" if you're either neutral or opposed to A, what change(s) to A would make you supportive for C? I've seen a few "WG consensus calls" which appeared somewhat skewed/biased to me towards exclusing specific outcomes. I do _not_ know whether this was causes by malicous intent or just accidental / not sufficiently well thought out. I'm OK with a leadership decision, but leadership decisions should not be exerted early in the process by preventing certain questions to get asked at all. How well the process works can be seen by how objections are resolved. Are objections handled by spin doctors, or by engineers that are open to improvements of their work. -Martin ******************************************************************** This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender. You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or distribute its contents to any other person. ********************************************************************