From the post:
If you are a normal human being and find the Paxos protocol confusing, then this paper, Paxos Made Moderately Complex, is a great find. Robbert van Renesse from Cornell University has written a clear and well written paper with excellent explanations.
The Abstract:
For anybody who has ever tried to implement it, Paxos is by no means a simple protocol, even though it is based on relatively simple invariants. This paper provides imperative pseudo-code for the full Paxos (or Multi-Paxos) protocol without shying away from discussing various implementation details. The initial description avoids optimizations that complicate comprehension. Next we discuss liveness, and list various optimizations that make the protocol practical.
If you need safety (“freedom from inconsistency”) and fault-tolerant topic map results, you may want to spend some quality time with this paper.
As with most things, user requirements are going to drive the choices you have to make.
Hard for me to think a “loosely consistent” merging system is useful, but for TV entertainment data that may be enough. Who is sleeping with who probably has lag time in reporting anyway.
For more serious data, Paxos may be your protocol of choice.