alt Hacker NewsSadly, a similar myth/fallacy persists about the Wikipedia consensus process (at least the English project and others deriving policy from it.)
Participants in disputes and RFCs literally call their comments “!vote” in true hacker notation, to repeatedly and clearly emphasize that “vote count” is never a factor in the process of establishing consensus.
(Elections are, however, regularly held, and votes counted, for positions such as Administrator, and the ArbCom seats, but that’s for people, not article content.)
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There is a small and noisy contingent here that never fails to get bent about community driven projects accusing them of bias and insinuating that there is some kind of shadowy cabal running things and it would be hilarious if the reasons for it weren’t so transparent. Also those people are 100 percent MAGA
From the way DJB talks about IETF processes, it's quite clear to me though that he has little trust/belief in the IETF consensus process. I thought he said as much somewhere but can't find that right now. (It's particularly obvious in https://blog.cr.yp.to/20260405-votes.html)
Which is why I'm noting the alienation of "IETF believers", which I should maybe clarify I count myself as. The IETF is a lot of people doing a lot of good work. It does include a bunch of questionable actors, anything from ignorant, incompetent, ulterior motives, to outright malicious. But all in all it has brought us the internet as it exists today and I can't help feeling a little, well, alienated by DJB's writs.
[ed.:] https://blog.cr.yp.to/20251004-weakened.html#agreement says:
Anyway, IETF hasn't attempted to issue such a rule. On the contrary, IETF claims that WG decisions are not taken by voting: "Decisions within WGs, as with the broader IETF, are taken by 'rough consensus' and not by voting." This begs the question of what IETF thinks "rough consensus" means. Letting chairs make arbitrary decisions is a violation of due process.
More to the point, IETF can't override the definition of "consensus" in the law. That definition requires general agreement. Adoption of this draft was controversial, and didn't reach general agreement.
DJB making legal-ish arguments (or the idea that the IETF could be sued over a definition of "rough consensus") is absolutely inane to me. The choice of words of the IETF in defining its own processes for itself is not a legal one. And apart from that, which country's laws would that be? (I'm also quite skeptical about such a definition existing in a relevant manner to begin with.)