On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Ian Hickson
<ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
I must admit to being more interested in technical soundness than
consensus. However, if we are to base things on consensus, then we need an
objective definition of consensus, so that it can be determined when we do
or do not have consensus. Is there such a definition?
It's simpler for WG documents, where the WG chair is responsible for
determining WG consensus. Unless it turns out that there's an opposite
consensus outside the WG, the WG consensus is generally not overturned
by individual feedback in Last Call when IETF consensus is confirmed.
For individual proposals, it's tougher to determine consensus but
the AD responsible for sponsoring the document is responsible for
judging consensus based on all the feedback she's aware of.
That's
objective only in the sense that somebody is objectively defined to
make the subjective call, but that's the heart of the matter.
It helps our transparency to make consensus calls explicit, if
there are individual issues that can be teased out for such a call --
particularly if people can vote not only for or against, but also for
"dealbreaker" and "not a dealbreaker".
Lisa