On Monday 18 July 2005 06:33, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote: A metric other than unanimity is to reach for better than BATNA: [[ Lawrence E. Susskind, A short guide to consensus building We want to differentiate the idea of maximizing joint gain from the simple-minded language of "win-win" negotiating. We are interested in helping parties do better than what no agreement probably holds in store for them. Doing better than one's BATNA (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) is the way to measure success in consensus building. There are few, if any situations, where everyone can get everything they want (which is what "winning" sounds like to us). (Susskind 1999) ]] (In the same volume, a great practitioner chapter is Mckearnam and Fairman (1999) on Producing consensus: http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/06/search.cgi?query=Mckearnam%20and%20Fairman… ) It's a very rich, and complex notion, as evidenced by some musings on consensus in the W3C/IETF context: [[ http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/reagle/regulation-19990326.html#_Consen… If one is still looking for a more concrete definition, one is unlikely to find it. The notable characteristic of consensus mechanisms as a means of preference aggregation is that they are flexible and informal, and that they work best in small communities such that differences can be easily documented, considered, and resolved. The method of reaching consensus alone does not scale well to large communities; however, when combined with the characteristics below, it often scales better than a ballot among a million people! This is because of competitive scaling: a small group of people get to produce their best work under consensus, and then compete, coordinate, cooperate, and learn with other groups. ]] Also, as an aside, the recent debate on pseudo-science and labels is reminiscent of other encyclopedic debates: [[Richard R Yeo, Encyclopedic Visions From the evidence of his correspondence, however, it seemed that this balance account of the state of play was sometimes difficult to achieve, especially in subjects undergoing rapid and pure core theoretical development. In such cases, the question was: should scientific articles seek to express the consensus of the scientific community, however defined, what should they include the most recent, controversial hypotheses? (Yeo 2001:270) ]] In any case, I rather like the notion -- and problem -- articulated by Sanger: [[ Sanger, The early history of Nupedia and Wikipedia: a memoir For our purposes, a "consensus" appeared to consist of (1) widespread common practice, (2) many vocal defenders, and (3) virtually no detractors. (Sanger 2005ehn) ]]