Magnus Manske wrote: With the risk of getting overly philosophical... Even in a parliamentary democracy, there has to be consensus about using voting as the method and how to apply it. Otherwise, the method will be useless. In open organizations (where anybody can become a member at no cost) such as the IETF and Wikipedia, voting is problematic, since it is unclear who is eligible to vote. This leaves a suspicion that the opposite party cheats by subscribing new voters, undermining the consensus about voting as a method. Within the IETF and in some other places, consensus is often hailed as a better alternative to voting, but they are two methods that have always been intertwined. When the IETF hails "rough consensus and running code" as their successful method, I think "running code" is the more important part, since the obvious problems with voting leave "rough consensus" as the only realistic alternative. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

One reason might be that I would automatically discount a flood of similarly worded messages from people who have never joined the discussion before. Consensus leaves me wiggle room to find ways to make adjustments, based on the rich fabric of information I get from lots of discussions. Voting, on the other hand, is manipulable unless I have equal freedom to simply discount some votes. And that's fine, too. Except that it removes one of the big positives from the voting system, namely that it's more clearly defined and objective. One solution that might be greeted with massive howls of protest (or might not!) would be to someday restrict voting to 'members' who have contributed at a level of say $20 per year, perhaps with some oldtimers grandfathered in for 5 years. There are pros and cons to this, obviously. But it is a fairly common way of restricting voting privileges in nonprofit organizations. --Jimbo

Anthere wrote: I think that provisions could be made for anonymity, yes. This strikes me as useless and paranoid, but sure, why not? And not sending _me_ $40, I don't want it. --Jimbo

--- Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> wrote: Yeah sure. As a poll. Not as a decision. Only that is not clear to most internationals. And...on which basis will we say there is consensus or not ? When I enter a voting place in France, I know what is the pourcentage required for a proposition to be rejected or not. Here nobody knows, for it has never been discussed through which process the decision would be taken. What is that way of doing, "voting" without knowing what will be done with the "votes" ??? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com