Voting mechnism is needed for xdg discussion.

[Liam R E Quin]

On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 21:02 +0800, PCMan wrote:
[...]
> I propose setting up a voting mechanism for some unresolved issues.
> A forum hosted on freedesktop.org or some other places is acceptable.

In general, if there is a lack of consensus, voting is unlikely to
produce consensus.

To get cosensus, it helps to follow a path like this:
(1) make a list of the issues preventing consensus
(2) propose solutions for each issue
(3) ask if there is anyone who disagrees with the solutions
(4) for each disagreement, ask if there is a compromise the person
    can live with, and ask if everyone else can live with that.

This is why the most widely-deployed specs are often full of ugly
compromises - it's better to have agreement on something imperfect
than to have a solution that doesn't work for everyone.


Voting inherently disenfranchises minorities.  That is, the nature of
a majority vote is such that the people who vote No get overruled; this
is very different from achieving consensus.

Hope this helps.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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