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

Hi Carlos,

Carlos Friaças wrote on 09/05/2020 22:25:
> On Sat, 9 May 2020, Nick Hilliard wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Same goes for "it takes only 2 or 3 voices to break consensus".
> 
> Even if arguments are somewhat "creative"...

no, and in fact this is the point of consensus.  It depends on informed 
judgement and assessment, not a handful of dissenting voices, or people 
shouting, or votes or anything else.  It's worth reading RFC 7282. 
There is a lot of wisdom in that document.

>> 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.
> 
> The *proposal* does not proceed... the policy can already be in place, 
> but remains unchanged.

The existing reached consensus despite a number of dissenting voices :-)

Personally, I think the policy does more harm than good, but it is what 
it is.  I'm not going to put in a proposal to remove it because that 
probably wouldn't reach consensus and it would end up wasting working 
group time.

Nick