[Fwd: Re: rough consensus (was Re: "trouble maker")]

James Seng jseng at pobox.org.sg
Wed Jul 16 17:52:43 CEST 2003


following from the brief discussion at the mike on "rough consensus", I 
would like to raise the ambiguity of "rough consensus" as a problem.

The current rough consnsus _process_ as defined in RFC 2418 basically 
say "It is up to the Chair to determine if rough consensus has been reach."

Because of this ambiguity, there is a general perspection that the 
"Chair has all the power => top-down". And what "rough consensus" the 
Chairs determined may also be disagree by a some people, a few may be 
become dissent, likewise due to this ambiguity.

<solutionism>
While a formal definition may be hard to nail down, it would be useful 
to cite several examples of past experiences. It also helpful to 
document some of the consideration and the thinking process the wg 
chairs takes to determine rough consensus.
</solutionism>

-James Seng

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: rough consensus (was Re: "trouble maker")
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 03:43:09 +0800
From: James Seng <jseng at pobox.org.sg>
To: Avri Doria <avri at acm.org>
CC: problem-statement at alvestrand.no,	Harald Alvestrand 
<harald at alvestrand.no>

I believe the general problem is our current process of letting wg
chairs determine rough consensus without a general definition. (Yes, I
know it is a feature too :P)

Since people have different opinion of the "rough consensus", those
(especially the doc authors or someone with more then casual
interest[1])  who disagree with the chair become resentful of the IETF
process.

Personally, I already lost count how many times it happens. It is not
healty.

[1] "more then casual interest" != vested interest. (See Keith v.s NAT,
no offense intended :-)

-James Seng

Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This has been a very interesting discussion, and I beleive that
> it is important that the details of this issue be debated and resolved.
> I do not believe that should be done on this list.  It was good to get
> the problem discussed so that people could do an abstraction of it
> for the problem statement, but I would like to avoid dwelling on  the
> specific arguments relating to it any longer.
> 
> At this point  I ask that people concentrate on the general language
> for the problem statement so that we can make sure that the problem
> is reflected adequately in  the problem statement.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Avri
> co-chair
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On torsdag, jun 26, 2003, at 13:45 Asia/Seoul, Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 







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