[Tagging] An after-burner meta-discussion

[stevea]

To be more clear:  what I am talking about here is how what is very often, good, spirited discussion, with good ideas, good technical direction and so on, simply gets ignored.  It does not "flow forward in the greater flow(chart) of consensus."  Instead, (perhaps because of sheer volume?) it gets "vented off like hot gas from an oilfield flare," completely wasted as it is ignored.

What is beginning to emerge as I discuss this more off-list with a number of people is this:  there seems to be a great disconnect in how people "implement consensus" on this list.  (In short, we really don't).  I think this stems from a fundamental lack of understanding about what consensus really is.  And that exasperates me with what feels like an overwhelming task.

I don't know how to solve this, but it does seem an important initial direction is for a much broader segment of our community to be participating in actual processes of consensus.  In my opinion, we have a long way to go in that regard.  I mean, for example, try reading Wikipedia's article on consensus [1] (which is OK, but only the tip of a big iceberg) and see how close that comes to how this list conducts itself.  These are a far, far distance from each other.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making