[rpd] Appeal against softlanding-bis declaration of consensus

[Sander Steffann]

Hi Omo,

> He advised that we needed to negotiate otherwise he would post a counterproposal which had 8 authors on the lists and claimed that neither would pass as it was very easy to block consensus on policies.

Yes, this is a feature. Changes to policies can only be made by consensus. If there is disagreement then policies stay as they are. This prevents (groups of) people forcing changes through that parts of the community are opposed to.

> The rest is in the archives.  We have since seen the various attempts to make good on this threat to block consensus on SL-BIS. 

Again: it's not a threat, that's how consensus based policy development works. Blocking consensus is indeed easy when there are sustainable arguments against it. In the PDP the burden to show that a change is good is on the proposers. The default is always to stay with the existing policy until the community has consensus otherwise.

>  The proposal ended up being unnecessarily contentious despite its aim for the best interests of the whole community. 

I fully believe that that it is the intention of the authors. However, not everybody agrees that the proposal is good for the whole community. Therefore there is no consensus.

>  Failing to block consensus on the policy, the process which had served well up till now has become the new AfriNIC structure to assault.

The process has been violated by the actions of the proposers and the chairs. There was no consensus, and in that case the nobody has a right to force their views on the community, no matter how well intended. 

Cheers,
Sander