Hi Bill,
Had only two people responded and both said "yes", you'd know better than to call it a consensus. I'm not sure why 14 respondents including dissent should suggest a different conclusion.
In fact, if only two people responded, I'd conclude that the rest didn't care and thus it was acceptable. Yes, that counts as rough consensus.
For a weak consensus (or "rough consensus" if you prefer the IETF parlance) you're looking for one of two situations: Situation A: 1. The stakeholders are present 2. A simple majority join the consensus. 3. No more than a single-digit-percentage join the dissent Situation B: 1. The stakeholders are present 2. A significant minority join the consensus. 3. No dissent.
Interesting, but that doesn't match my experience, my expectations, or my criteria.
Your methodology was in error. By failing to consider the stakeholders present but non-responsive, you pre-eliminated the possibility of "no consensus," requiring respondents to either vote for or against the particular definition. That's not a consensus; that's a vote.
Call it what you like. If folks don't hum, then they don't contribute to the consensus. There are currently 463 members of the RRG, based on the mailing list membership. By your criteria, we need to have input from nearly two hundred people to reach any kind of consensus. That's a guarantee of never making progress. No thank you. If folks care, they'll speak up. If they don't care, then it must not be important to them and we should move on.
Corrected for non-response, the proper conclusion from your data is: No consensus.
Thank you for your concern. I'm sorry that you feel like you've lost and that I'm being unresaonable. All I'm trying to do is to move forward.
Cheers, Tony _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list [email protected] http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg
