Subject: Humming can be superior to "show of hands"

From: Jacob Palme <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 20:07:13 +0200

The ITU chairman at the on-going IETF meeting in Oslo (July
1999) expressed surprise at the humming, and said that a
show of hands was more what he was accustomed to. 

However, humming is actually a voting tool which allows a
more versatile show of opinions than a show of hands. Those
who are very sure of their opinions, can hum louder. Those
who are not so sure, can hum less loudly. The hums will
then automatically be totalled in such a way that the loud
hums are given higher weight than the less loud hums. This
is important in an organisation like IETF, because the
people who come to a working group meeting have very
variable expertise on the topic of the group. 

Of course, there is no way of stopping someone who does not
understand the issues, but who still hums loudly. So
humming also has some drawbacks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <[email-masked]> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 10:35:04 +0100 (BST)

> show of hands was more what he was accustomed to. 

Since the rows are weighted so that people who have read drafts
and are therefore able to express intelligent opinions are supposed to
be in the two front rows, does this mean that raised hands or murmurs
in the front rows count more than those further back?

L.

hope so. Rough consensus is all very well until it turns into democracy.

<[email-masked]>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 10:35:04 +0100 (BST)

L.

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 13:11:46 +0200

> in the front rows count more than those further back?

Well, in the case of murmurs, the answer is probably yes, since the person
who's gathering the data can hear them better.  :-)

--
/=============================================================\
|John Stracke    | My opinions are my own | S/MIME & HTML OK  |
[email-masked]|============================================|
|Chief Scientist | NT's lack of reliability is only surpassed |
|eCal Corp.      |  by its lack of scalability. -- John Kirch |
\=============================================================/

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 13:11:46 +0200