Re: QT4CG “Charter and process” proposal

> - "clear consensus"
> -- What does this mean? That a majority or a supermajority are in
> agreement? Or that everyone is in agreement? If the former, what ratio
> of agree/disgree/abstain counts as a "clear majority"?

In a standards-track working group, there are various ways to appeal to
the technical architecture group or the director. We’re living in a
somewhat looser environment.

I think we should be trying to arrive at consensus positions where even
those who might have preferred a different resolution to a particular
issue will agree that they can “live with” the prevailing decision and
accept it.

Personally, I consider voting a last resort measure. And even when it
happens, I’d prefer it to be a way of determining in what direction
consensus lies rather than saying the decision is resolved in favor of
the majority.

I’d be reluctant to try to nail down percentages precisely because,
ironically, I think that would encourage problems rather than help
resolve them. If we said, for example, that you needed a supermajority
of 75%, I don’t want to get into a debate about how the decision fails
to achieve clear consensus because only 7 out of 10 participates agree
with it.

Informally, I’d say any issue where we have more than one person
strongly dissenting probably hasn’t achieved consensus. (I’m not saying
that a *single* dissenting participant isn’t or can’t be right, I’m saying
that in the interest of the group making progress, it’s often better for
that person to take an “I told you so” token to play later and let the
issue go. But when there’s more than one dissenter, it starts to look
like things probably aren’t resolved.) 

> - "if implementors raise strong objections"
> -- All implementors? Some implementors? Would a strong objection from
> a single implementor be sufficient to reject a proposal?

I’m not sure how to gloss this one. If we want to finish this effort in
a small, bounded amount of time, we need some sort of escape valve for
folks who are actually going to be writing code that implements the
specification to say “look, it’s a cool idea, but it’ll take a decade to
get right, let’s not put it on the critical path for v.next”.

If someone else knows how to write that up, please make a suggestion!
Please!

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
Saxonica