From: David Barr (barr@visi.com)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 10:18:07 CST
> "10 people out of 18 were willing to accept the #1
> decision" or "only 4 people out of 18 were unwilling to
> accept the #1 decision"
>
> I think this has to be discussed on the List, and then our
> Chairman has to declare whether that amounts to rough
> consensus, or else he has to take advice from the IESG.
Given the number of options, it's not bad to see an arguably "narrow"
majority (10 out of 18) for one position. The 4 out of 18 is a clear
indication that #1 clearly is overwhelmingingly considered a good
decision. The fact remains we still have some others that we also
consider "good", but fundamentally it comes down to picking something
that is clearly acceptable to the large majority and moving forward.
That, fundamentally, is the definition of consensus.
I declare that #1 has achieved rough consensus and we should move
forward on that basis.
[ One note on why I didn't vote - I was out of town for the past two
weeks and couldn't devote sufficient time to study all the options to my
satisfaction, however my vote would have been fairly consistent with the
consensus positions ]
> The majority view here was evidently to split the document.
> Although the majority was not huge, enough people placed #X
> as their third choice to make it clear that the majority
> decision should be accepted by all. In fact, the majority
> against #X was 13:4 (only 1 abstention this time) and I think
> that is a clear "rough consensus".
I agree.
I'd like to thank Charles for the huge amount of effort in conducting
this poll and the subsequent analysis.
--Dave