[Foundation-l] Consensus [was: Top 10 Wikipedias]

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I haven't been able to figure out whether or not any of them have
>> managed to define that concept in a reasonable manner, though.
>
> Consensus doesn't need defining. Consensus decision making isn't
> something you actively do, it's what happens automatically when you
> don't impose any other form of decision making and everyone has the
> power to undo any change.
>
That may be your definition of "consensus", but it's certainly not the
only one.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making suggest that
there is much more to consensus decision making than just letting
everyone do whatever they want.  In fact, what you describe sounds
more like anarchy than consensus.

The model described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_consensus
seems somewhat close to the practice I've seen on the English
projects, at least in those areas that have decisionmakers who
formally declare whether or not consensus has been reached (e.g. AfD).
 Interestingly, [[Wikipedia:Consensus]] doesn't even seem to link to
that page or point to the IETF model.