svn commit: r1135783 - /comdev/site/trunk/content/committers/consensusBuilding.mdtext

[rg...@apache.org]

Author: rgardler
Date: Tue Jun 14 20:45:34 2011
New Revision: 1135783

URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=1135783&view=rev
Log:
Initial consensus building doc

Added:
    comdev/site/trunk/content/committers/consensusBuilding.mdtext   (with props)

Added: comdev/site/trunk/content/committers/consensusBuilding.mdtext
URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/comdev/site/trunk/content/committers/consensusBuilding.mdtext?rev=1135783&view=auto
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+Title:
+Notice:    Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+           or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+           distributed with this work for additional information
+           regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+           to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+           "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+           with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+           .
+             http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+           .
+           Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+           software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+           "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+           KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+           specific language governing permissions and limitations
+           under the License.
+
+In some cases there is no obvious path to take, or you might be a new community, 
+or a new member of an existing community. In these cases people will often 
+need to build consensus by making proposals and eliciting responses.
+
+We want to avoid unnecessary discussion and the creation of significant
+amounts of unnecessary mail that everyone in the community needs to read. 
+That is not to say that we want to avoid constructive discussion. This is 
+the lifeblood of a successful project. However, many ASF projects adopt a 
+shorthand notation for showing support, or otherwise, for a proposal.
+
+## Expressing support (or otherwise)
+
+The notation used is "+1", "-1" and "0". It's also common to see "+0" and "-0".
+
+So, what do these notations mean?
+
+  - +1 means "I agree with this and will help make it happen"
+  - +0 means "I agree with this but probably won't make it happen, so my 
+opinion is not that important"
+  - -0 means "I don't agree with this, but I'm offering no alternative so 
+my opinion is not that important"
+  - -1 means "I don't agree and I am offering an alternative that I am able 
+to help implement"
+
+Many people will use fractions to indicate the strength of their feelings,
+ e.g. "+0.5". Some will even indicate this is a "no brainer" with something 
+like "+1000".
+
+The important thing is that this is not an exact science. It's just a shorthand 
+way of communicating strength of feeling.
+
+## Consensus Building is Not Voting
+
+The confusing thing about this notation is that it is the same notation
+used in a formal vote. Knowing when something is a vote and when it is a 
+preference is important. It's easy to tell though, if the subject does not have 
+"[Vote]" at the start then it's just an opinion. We try not to call votes,
+consensus building is much more inclusive.
+
+The reasons for this notation being common is 
+that when someone wants to summarise a discussion thread they can mentally 
+add up the strength of feeling of the community and decide if there is consensus
+or not.
+
+Once there is a clear consensus members of the community can proceed with 
+the work under the [lazy consensus][1] model.
+
+  [1]: /rave/docs/governance/lazyConsensus.html
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