--- title: "Title: Guidance on Building Consensus" audience: "WG21 Authors: (Directions Group) Jeff Garland Paul E. McKenney Roger Orr Bjarne Stroustrup David Vandevoorde Michael Wong" reply-to: - "" document: p4024r0 date: 2026-02-22 paper-type: proposal --- Doc. No. P4024R0 Audience: WG21 Authors: (Directions Group) Jeff Garland Paul E. McKenney Roger Orr Bjarne Stroustrup David Vandevoorde Michael Wong Reply to: [fraggamuffin@gmail.com](mailto:fraggamuffin@gmail.com) # Title: Guidance on Building Consensus **1. Motivation:** The C++ community thrives on diverse perspectives to ensure the language evolves coherently and serves its vast user base effectively. Historically, many significant C++ features have originated from the vision of individual authors. However, as the language and its user base grow in complexity, proposals originating from a single source or specific corporate context may inadvertently optimize for a specific domain at the expense of broader applicability. To avoid the risk of creating "dialects" or late-stage design conflicts, we aim to foster earlier collaboration. The goal is not to mandate co-authorship for its own sake, but to ensure that high-impact features benefit from cross-domain scrutiny before they consume significant plenary time. **2. Principles and Recommendations:** We propose the following guidelines to encourage convergence and enhance the review process: **Scope-Appropriate Engagement:** * **Small/Localized Features:** For bug fixes or features with localized impact, single authorship remains efficient and appropriate. * **Broad/Strategic Features:** For features affecting core language semantics or widely-used library components, authors are strongly encouraged to validate their design against use cases outside their immediate organization early in the process. **Proactive Unification (The "No Surprise Competitors" Rule):** concurrency models or networking libraries), the authors are expected to communicate *before* bringing the conflict to the full working group. * The ideal outcome is a unified proposal, or at minimum, a joint paper explicitly detailing the trade-offs between the two approaches. **Consultation with Experience:** * **Long-Tenure Members:** Authors are encouraged to consult with long-term committee members who understand WG21 norms, history, and political dynamics. They can flag "landmines" and help frame proposals in ways that resonate with the broader committee. * **Generalist Review:** Authors should seek feedback from individuals with a broad base of knowledge across the entire language and library, rather than just deep experts in a single domain. Domain experts may have "optimized" views that conflict with general usability. **Rationale and Breadth:** * Proposals for large features should include a "Design Scope" section in their rationale. This section should articulate why the design is general-purpose rather than niche, and acknowledge alternative designs considered. * While co-authorship is a strong signal of consensus, it is not required. A single author citing feedback from diverse reviewers (e.g., "Thanks to X from Embedded and Y from HFT for review") is equally valid. **WG/SG Chair Guidance:** * **Facilitation over Mandate:** Chairs are encouraged to act as **matchmakers** rather than gatekeepers. When identifying competing or overlapping proposals, Chairs should facilitate introductions between authors working in similar spaces. * **Encouraging Convergence:** Chairs may request that authors of competing proposals attempt to unify their designs or produce a comparison paper before scheduling further time for the individual papers. * **Prioritization:** Priority should be given to proposals that demonstrate they have addressed the "Broad Consensus" principle, reducing the burden on the committee to adjudicate avoidable conflicts.