understanding consensus

[Scott Bradner <sob@newdev.harvard.edu>]

The topic of understanding consensus on a mailing list like this one was
brought up a few days ago.  I've done a quick scan of the postings to the
iahc-discuss list since the draft was posted to show the level and
distribution of participation (and the number of lurkers)  

  - as of last midnight

	there were about 330 people on the list
	there had been 997 messages since the posting of the draft
	two people accounted for nearly 20% of the messages
	four people accounted for about 1/3 of the messages
	ten people accounted for about 2/3 of the messages
	74 people had posted at least once
	about 250 people have not posted

i.e. do not be mislead that this (or any such) list has reached consensus
by seeing that the majority of messages support a particular position.
Counting posted messages is not an accurate way to gage consensus - you can
get a bit closer if you look at the sources of the messages and count them.
But we do have rather many observers who have not been expressing their
opinions. (that is if they are not just tossing the traffic)

Scott

---
data:

  94 Jeff Williams
  94 Christopher Ambler
  79 Simon Higgs
  75 Perry E. Metzger
  58 Dave Crocker
  54 Michael Dillon
  52 Kent Crispin
  52 Karl Denninger 
  32 Carl Oppedahl
  29 Hank Nussbacher
  26 Thom Stark
  25 David Collier-Brown
  20 Eugene Kashpureff
  19 Leo Smith
  12 Aveek Datta
  11 davidk@ISI.EDU
  11 Bryant Durrell
  11 Alan Sullivan
  10 Rick H. Wesson
  10 Karl Auerbach
   9 Kevin Brown
   8 Stephen Harris
   8 Robert Frank
   8 Gilles LERAT
   8 D. Chiodo
   7 Mikael Pawlo
   7 Joseph J. Kim
   7 Joe Kelsey
   7 Donald Heath
   7 Das Devaraj
   6 Thabet Birro
   6 Steve Peterson
   6 Paul Svensson
   6 David Rosenthal
   5 Werner Staub
   5 Peter Mott
   5 Paul Ezra Kautz
   5 John Leslie
   5 David R. Conrad
   5 Danny Padwa
   4 John Palmer
   4 Calvin Browne
   4 Brad Templeton
   4 Albert Tramposch
   3 Marty Modell
   3 Marc Hurst
   3 Gary Morrell
   3 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
   3 Christopher Sevcik
   2 Wallace Koehler
   2 Scott Bradner
   2 John R Levine
   2 John Frangie
   2 Einar Stefferud
   2 Dick desJardins
   1 jamie@gritton.org
   1 amandeep-sandhu
   1 Vince Wolodkin
   1 Tushar Patel
   1 Tim Headley
   1 Tierno S. Bah
   1 Mohammed A. Al-Omari
   1 Mark Lottor
   1 Mark J Elkins
   1 Leonid Egoshin
   1 John Harvey
   1 Jim Dueltgen
   1 James Gritton
   1 Greg Rusnell
   1 Darrell Greenwood
   1 Daniel Kaplan
   1 Cary Karp
   1 Brian Pollack
   1 Adam Wilner