Re: First call for vote on immediate vote under section 4.2.2

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:

>> That's certainly someting to strive for, but I don't think it's a
>> practical *requirement* in an organization the size of Debian.  I do
>> agree that we shouldn't easily give up on trying to reach that form of
>> stronger consensus.

> Personally, I think the RFC 3160 view of '"rough consensus", meaning
> that a very large majority of those who care must agree' would be good
> enough.  What is "a very large majority" these days?  I suspect it
> should be larger than the margins that the DPL got in recent votes (3 to
> 1 and 5.77 to 1, if I've worked them out right).

Ah, okay, I think we can agree on that.  If we're just arguing over what
level of supermajority makes a consensus, I think we're just debating
practical application and not really the underlying principle.

> In general, it wouldn't be a practical requirement, but it's practical
> for most DPL powers.  It's one of a few things which stop DPLs having
> absolute power.  If the DPL cannot find a consensus, then there are
> other methods to reach a decision and the DPL has simplified access to
> some of them.

True.

>> Numerous public statements by the IESG and by ADs over years of working
>> groups in which I've participated, and release of documents for which
>> there was exactly that sort of consensus (RFC 2822, for instance).

> Can someone point me to one, please?  www.ietf.org seems to have replaced
> its web search with google, which just returns noise when I try to find
> one, and I didn't find a decent index to the drums archive (when looking
> into the release situation of 2822).

Unfortunately, I can't, since I'm speaking from personal memory and didn't
retain URLs.  :/  We've had several rough consensus calls recently in
USEFOR, and there was one major one with article numbers in the
now-published NNTP standard.

> That's the sort of time I meant when I wrote "Sometimes bad decisions
> are the only possible decisions, but I don't believe that's as common as
> the disputes under this DPL."  I don't mean that the decision is evil or
> wrong necessarily, just that it's not a good strong decision.

Ah, okay.  I understand, then, I think.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>