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

[Bill Sommerfeld]

> Another example, a proposal have only a handful of people supporting it 
> passionly but the rest of the group is in the class 'don't care but no 
> object', 'dont like it but wont bother to object', 'finds the whole 
> excerise waste of time'.
> 
> So when you call for a hum, you get some very loud hum but still weak. 
> You call for objections, silent. Do you move forward?

well, if the silent majority is truly silent, the trick is to
distinguish the case you cited from "small number of enthusiastic
prospective users and implementors, many apathetic don't minds"
meaning that there's a small community of interest in a feature which
does no appreciable harm to the larger community as whole.

In most working groups I frequent, there are plenty of people who are
not shy about announcing that they dislike a proposal..

						- Bill