Mike,
On 13/06/2015 04:52, Michael StJohns wrote:
...
> My - let's not call it a theory, but an emerging hypothesis - is that the consensus process tends to incentivize confrontational approaches, especially when the difference between winning and losing may have real world implications for the participants in the form of compensation, recognition, product acceptance etc.
I snipped this out of context to bring up another point we haven't really
focussed on: all this talk of winning and losing. My emerging hypothesis is
that treating a standards discussion as a zero-sum game, with winners and
losers, is a fundamental mistake that we all tend to make. We should always
be looking for a win-win. Probably the most important thing that ADs and
WG chairs could do to make our discussions more courteous is to remind
everybody of this whenever necessary.
I have a secondary hypothesis that the nature of the rough consensus
process makes people a bit more likely to behav as if they are in a zero-sum
game, but that is secondary and hard to prove.
Brian