One place I've seen unanimity come up is one when a subgroup puts together a plan and the larger group needs to approve it. Often this is treated as a technicality, or a nuisance, rather than taking the responsibility of oversight seriously. These decisions are a backstop for poor choices or even misbehaviour, and it's important to engage fully.

@jmeowmeow this is a great example. Unanimity where the record shows real evidence of deliberation, and that the consensus is hard won, is probably a lot healthier than a unanimous vote without discussion or debate (as almost happens at the beginning of that story!).

Unanimity can also mean that the members are incredibly aligned; they share a common mission and they have similarly good skills in understanding information they have been presented. Even in this case, it's probably not great. Groupthink can set in, and the body can go off course unanimously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Personally, if I am in a decision-making body that is having unanimous rubber-stamped votes, I'll raise objections and start discussions on principle. Sometimes this is to force myself to take my decision-making responsibility seriously. Other times, it's to give others in the group social permission to voice other objections, some of which might be more material than my own.

Sometimes unanimity is required to show how important the conclusion is. Those kinds of decisions are rare though. I'm less concerned about occasional shows of solidarity, and more concerned about groups that agree 100% for vote after vote.

I'd say it's more bad than good, but not exclusively bad. It's possible that the body has wrestled through their disputes in some sort of discussion already. The question under vote is already a compromise. I think that's rare, though. Few compromises are perfect, and they usually leave a residue of a few holdout votes.

It can also mean that the real decisions are being made somewhere else. If they are, then whatever that decision-making process is, it should become canonical, instead of hiding behind what seems to be a meaningless voting process.

It shows that the questions don't have significant stakes. If people don't care enough to take decisions for AND against, maybe the frontier is somewhere else. The body is not engaging on that frontier.

It's a sign that participants aren't paying attention or engaging meaningfully with the decisions. This can happen either because the question is too trivial and they can't see why they're being asked (like approving the minutes of the last meeting) or too big and daunting so they don't even know where to start in the discussion (like the nuclear reactor in Parkinson's Law of Triviality example).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Thanks everyone who replied. I think more bad than good. Here are my thoughts.

@BathysphereHat woohooo #crispsandwichday

@skyfaller life is about making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. If that doesn't seem fun or interesting to you, though, feel free to sit this one out.

@skyfaller https://evanp.me/pollfaq#itdepends

It would be wild if this poll were unanimous

Is unanimity in a decision-making body good or bad?

#EvanPoll #poll #unanimity #decisions

If you want to make something on the Fediverse, please make it. If someone tells you they don't like it or they don't think it's necessary, tell them they don't have to use it. It's a big Fediverse out there. Lots of open space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_Piker

Should Democratic Party candidates accept support from Hasan Piker?

#EvanPoll #poll #DemocraticParty #HasanPiker #uspol

@OliviaVespera @cwebber

I like the idea behind CC Signals but it needs to ship a prototype soon.

https://creativecommons.org/cc-signals/

@creativecommons

#ccsignals #creativecommons

@cwebber

The mechanism is not the issue. I think the expression of author intent is really important!

For Web resources, we have the AI preferences from IETF:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-aipref-attach-05

But, of course, Free Software doesn't just come from one website. It's made to be spread around. It would be good to have some sort of AI prefs expressed in the package itself, no matter where it is.