Re: Re: hebrevc() and other 'contentious' 7.4 proposed deprecations

On Tue, 2019-07-16 at 08:00 -0700, Zeev Suraski wrote: > > Now unanimity implies consensus however not having a unanimous vote > does > > not mean there is no consensus. > > Moreover, even though "consensus" does come from the Latin > *cōnsēnsus* (“agreement, > > accordance, unanimity”) [3] it does not require unanimity IMHO. > > > > While there are different definitions for consensus - as you point > out > yourself, one of the definitions is certainly a synonym for uninamity > - and > that's how I personally found it commonly used throughout my life. > Regardless, it certainly implies no strong disagreement from those in > the > minority - which is not the case here. A good reading on consensus in technical discussions is this: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7282 In my view there is a difference between a vote and consensus. In a vote I state "this is my preference" in a consensus I can say "it is not my preference, but I can support it" And I believe the key is to identify whether there are objections/vetos. Those have to be respected, as voting over volunteer contributors drives them away. Voting is good if there is no clear consensus or if one has to make a decision, left or right, and there's no clear consensus. Unanimity in a vote means that this is the preferred approach for everybody (among voters) On hebrev()/hebrevc(): I believe most contributors have no idea what it does and I for one have no need. It doesn't hurt me, though. As long as it works for the users I'd keep it since cost is low. If I'd support adding such a function in future is a different question. johannes