[RPRWG] Reply to Mike Takefman's comments on Implications of a Passin Ballot
Mike, I guess I have a little different perspective on what an Approve Vote
and what a passing ballot means. I would encourage members of the SEC that
monitor this reflector to chime in with their perspectives as well. My
greatest concern with your interpretation is that it may allow some voters
to rationalize that they need not carefully review the draft now, because
there will be more time later. This point of view can have the very
damaging effect of delaying the final drafting, the final approval, and the
publication of the standard.
Let's start with the prerequisite for a passing ballot, and that is a 75% or
greater rate of voters saying in effect: "I Approve of the draft in its
present form, even if no technical changes are made to it." In my mind,
voting "Approve" on the draft is equivalent to stating that the draft is
ready for publication, with possible editorial or minor technical changes
that would not be serious enough to warrant stopping the publication. If
everyone votes "Approve", even with requests for technical changes
submitted, and if the Working Group decides to make no changes to the
document, then there is no recirculation ballot. In fact, if there are a
few technical changes made, then there is a recirculation ballot. However,
the only sections subject to review are those affected by the changes made.
The Working Group has the right to ignore technically valid comments made on
other sections of the draft. Therefore, voting "I approve" should be taken
very seriously, and only if the voter actually believes the draft is free of
any significant technical errors or deficiencies.
It turns out that the IEEE requires an additional voting cycle, by the
Sponsor Ballot Group, before the standard can be published. However, we
should neither expect, nor rely on the sponsor ballot pool to complete the
task that we have been assigned, and that is to prepare the draft for
publication.
That said, I believe that it is incumbent upon all of the voting members of
802.17 to very carefully scrutinize Draft 2.2, and to comment on all areas
of deficiency now, so that we can correct all of the troublesome areas, and
that way move expeditiously to publication of our standard.
Best regards,
Robert D. Love
President, LAN Connect Consultants
7105 Leveret Circle Raleigh, NC 27615
Phone: 919 848-6773 Mobile: 919 810-7816
email: rdlove@xxxxxxxx Fax: 208 978-1187
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Takefman" <tak@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "RPRWG" <stds-802-17@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:19 PM
Subject: [RPRWG] [Fwd: Ballot Reminder - your thoughts?]
>
> RPRWGers,
>
> the ballot runs for approximately 1 more week, please
> remember to get your votes in. Failure to respond to
> ballots will result in loss of voting rights.
>
> A reminder about process.
>
> A passing ballot does not imply that the draft will
> be forwarded to Sponsor Ballot. The WG must vote to
> forward the draft for Sponsor Ballot. What a passing
> ballot does is begin the recirculation process on
> the draft. Once we are in recirculations, you may
> only comment on changed portions of the draft or on
> areas affected by a change elsewhere. Hence the process
> begins to become bounded. As a WG, we should not forward
> a draft for sponsor until we have reached the point where
> improvements to the draft / concensus have been maximized.
>
> Thus your approve vote can be interpreted as either a
> belief that it is time to start getting the draft
> ready for sponsor ballot, or that you believe that it
> is time to begin to recirculate. Both are equivalent.
>
> In terms of voting approve with comments versus
> dissaprove with comments. If you fundamentally believe
> that something is broken, then you may choose to vote
> disapprove with comments. If you believe that something
> is broken, but believe that you can work with your
> fellow RPRWGers to resolve the comments you can vote
> approve with comments. There is risk in voting approve
> with comments, in that if the comment is not resolved
> to your satisfaction, but the ballot passed and the
> text is unchanged, then you are out of luck until the
> draft comes back in sponsor (and you end up being a
> member of the sponsor group, which is not guaranteed).
>
> Note: You may change your vote from approve to disapprove
> during recirculations. All you have to do is comment on
> a changed portion of text.
>
> Should a recirculated ballot fail, we are back to commenting
> on the entire draft (and the number advances to the next
> major revision).
>
> cheers,
>
> mike
>
> --
> Michael Takefman tak@xxxxxxxxx
> Manager of Engineering, Cisco Systems
> Chair IEEE 802.17 Stds WG
> 2000 Innovation Dr, Ottawa, Canada, K2K 3E8
> voice: 613-254-3399 cell:613-220-6991