> But consensus means, in a literal sense, that everybody needs to agree on the right thing to do.

I want to push back on this. I think there is absolutely such a thing as “rough consensus” where everyone gets to air their concerns, but the group still makes a decision where not everyone gets their way. Rough consensus processes are much harder to do over a mailing list because there’s no sense of what “the room” wants - since all the air gets taken up by the people who have the most time & are the most argumentative. It’s much easier to achieve rough consensus in person - especially amongst groups who have good working relationships with each other.

In many ways this is a product failure of mailing lists and the like. I’d love more answers in this space to allow us to make better collective decisions, remotely.