RE: [802SEC] Proposed Alternative to changing the rules for WG me mbership
At 13:41 24/09/2002 -0600, pat_thaler@agilent.com wrote:
>While I think Bob did somewhat miss the point, I agree somewhat with his
>suggestion.
>
>802.3 for a long time has stated to its voters that part of their
>obligation was to maintain correct contact information (especially email
>address) and does drop voters if their email consitantly bounces. People
>who are no longer interested in a working group because of a job change
>rarely take the time to notify the chair of their new email.
>
>We should formalize in the rules that failure to provide the chair with up
>to date contact information is grounds for loosing voting rights. That
>might not solve the total problem that some of the working groups are
>concerned about, but it is a reasonable and fair step.
As you say, this is effectively part of current practice, so it would be
just as well to formalize it in the rules. Might also be worth formalizing
the option for members who know that they have no further interest in a WG
to resign their vote - again, in practice, if someone asks to be taken off
a WG voting list, I am sure that their request would be granted.
However, I think the other part of Bob's suggestion - of allowing voters to
opt out of their balloting responsibilities on a ballot-by-ballot basis,
while maintaining their WG vote - is a bad idea. I think it is important to
maintain the principle that voting members take part in the work of the WG
- the major thrust of which is (should be) developing standards. The
"respond to 2 out of the last 3 ballots" rule seems to me to keep a
reasonable balance here.
>For the remainder of the problem, the following are possibilities:
>1) Keep the current 2 out of the last 4 rule, but make it 2 out of the
>last 4 working group meetings rather than plenary meetings - for the
>working groups that hold interim working group meetings, those meetings
>would be part of the count of the last 4 meetings. We made the rule depend
>only on plenaries because we felt it was desireable to accomodate voters
>who could only attend 3 meetings a year; especially international
>participants who have to travel to North America for most of the meetings.
>If working groups that feel they need to meet in full working group 6
>times a year, perhaps it is time to change that aspect of the rule. This
>also leaves the rule effectively unchanged for those working groups that
>only meet at plenaries.
This seems like a promising solution. However, as pointed out below, if we
go this route, the joining rule should also be changed to match (attend 2
out of 4 WG meetings, not plenaries, to gain your vote).
>2) Make the rule 2 out of 3. This is less draconian than the 2 out of 2
>that was in the rule change.
This rule has less problematic behaviour than the 2 out of 2 rule - I would
suggest that if we end up going this route, that the joining rule also be
changed to match (gain membership if attended 2 of the last 3
plenaries...etc) as this helps to avoid some of the cases where you can
gain membership and then immediately lose it again.
I wouldn't be unhappy with this as a compromise, but I prefer option 1).
>3) Lower quourum.
Didn't we beat this one to death a while back? I don't think that basing a
WG quorum on less than 50% of voters makes any sense - apart from anything
else, it increases the danger of making decisions in WG meetings that will
not stand the test of being balloted in a draft.
Regards,
Tony
>Regards,
>Pat
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tony Jeffree [mailto:tony@jeffree.co.uk]
>Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 10:46 AM
>To: Robert D. Love
>Cc: 802 SEC
>Subject: Re: [802SEC] Proposed Alternative to changing the rules for WG
>membership
>
>
>
>At 11:58 23/09/2002 -0400, Robert D. Love wrote:
>
> >Here is an interesting alternative to the proposed SEC motion to change the
> >rules for membership in the working group. Based on the negative comments
> >expressed so far it may be easier to more directly address the problem of
> >voting members that no longer are reachable or care to respond to WG email
> >requests.
> >
> >Add to the bylaws the ability of a WG prior to an electronic ballot to send
> >out an email request to all voting members to respond if they wish to be
> >included in the Working Group ballot pool for the upcoming Working Group
> >Ballot. The Email request to participate in the ballot pool would have to
> >be open for at least 30 days and close prior to the close of electronic
> >balloting. Whoever responds to neither the request to be in the ballot
> >pool, nor the ballot itself, would be dropped from the ballot pool. In this
> >way no voters that respond to the ballot or to the request would be dropped.
> >I believe that getting a quorum for voting would be far simpler if such a
> >process were instituted.
> >
> >Along with this motion we may also want to add words that it is the WG
> >participants responsibility to maintain accurate email contact information.
>
>Bob -
>
>I think you've massively missed the point. The proponents of the rule
>change seem to be primarily concerned with achieving quorums at interim
>meetings. I haven't so far heard difficulty in closing WG ballots being
>cited as one of the reasons for doing this.
>
>
>Regards,
>Tony
Regards,
Tony