[anti-abuse-wg] About "consensus" and "voting"...

Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote on 09/05/2020 15:23:
> Having one might at least lay this discussion to rest once and for all.  
> I’ve seen variants of it for several years now.

But imagine if someone contacted a bunch of their colleagues and said: 
"look, there's this policy proposal going on in RIPE AAWG and it would 
be really great if you could just join up on the mailing list and add in 
a +1, thanks!"

Therein lies the problem - or at least one of the problems - with 
voting: it's wide open to manipulation.

There is another way of looking at this stalemate though:  there's a 
policy development process and it produces outcomes.  The outcomes may 
not be what some individuals on the WG want, but they are clear outcomes 
all the same.

In the sense that you're concerned that there's stalemate regarding some 
of these proposals, there isn't according to the PDP: no consensus is a 
legitimate and clear outcome, and when there is no consensus, the policy 
does not proceed.

So the issue is more: why are newer versions of this policy proposal 
returning repeatedly, and are they dealing adequately with the things 
that are blocking consensus?

It's surprising to see a third iteration of this policy proposal - the 
first two versions didn't look like they were going anywhere.  But 
resubmitting new versions is an issue between the WG chairs and the 
proposer.

Nick