@kim Short version: a process of working towards a general universal agreement of *some* sort by talking through everybody's needs and concerns (and strictly expecting constructive discussion patterns around that only), to figure out some solution that can work for everybody.

That does not *necessarily* mean a compromise - sometimes the answer is a compromise, sometimes the answer is another new third solution, sometimes it's just a matter of correcting some misconceptions and concerns. Consensus building is the process of figuring that out collaboratively.

@kim (Obligatory "bigots can get fucked" of course, consensus building is a process that only includes those who act in good faith, even if there may be a disagreement between them)

@kim But yeah the crucial difference between a vote and consensus building is that the former pre-defines the available options regardless of whether any of them are good, whereas the latter is a process to find the optimal solution without assuming that it's already in the list.

It's a far more inclusive process, that doesn't run the same risk of marginalized needs and perspectives getting overlooked.

@joepie91 I think however I ended up labelling it, the image I had in my head was a process sort of in between the two. so voting on a dynamic poll that people can add options to and discuss under

@kim My experience is that as soon as you offer anything that looks like voting options, people assume "oh the talking stage is over" and it's almost impossible to get a good, in-depth engaged discussion on the matter

@kim An additional issue with that approach is also that it'll disadvantage any late additions, because there will be less people who can vote for them.

I think it's also worth asking what purpose a vote is meant to serve here to begin with. What question is it supposed to answer, if your goal is to find some outcome that everybody can be happy with?

Like, say that 80% votes yes and 20% votes no. That's a majority "yes", but that doesn't tell you anything about *why* people voted "no", or whether those are addressable concerns.

And you can *ask* people what their concerns are, but if you do, then what is the value of knowing the 80/20%? Does it make any difference from 90/10% or 99/1%? There's still people unhappy and concerns unaddressed either way.

Voting systems are extremely low-fidelity and ultimately are designed to serve "oppression of the majority" type models, where the options are predetermined - that's the only context in which these numbers can make sense, as far as I can tell. Do we actually have any purpose for that here?

Or to put it differently: if there *wasn't* a vote, and *only* a consensus building process... what information would we really be missing? What problem would that really cause, that justifies introducing voting?