FW: [802SEC] Ballot periods
Title: Message
Roger-
My profound apologies. In my zeal to protect the process I
was paying insufficient attention to courtesy.
More
appropriately...
1)
It isn't the Balloting's job to determine balloting periods, it is clearly
ours.
2) I
don't trust their judgement with respect to the defaults they may throw at us on
whatever basis they decide (unless they quote chapter and verse of their P&P
that over ride ours).
RE your statement:
Under the status quo, I do not agree that we
are in danger of ballots being overturned on appeal for following the
Balloting Center defaults (29-30 days for a ballot and 9-10 for a recirc).
Those defaults are in accordance with LMSC and IEEE-SA rules.
Our
rules currently say: "...for recirculation ballots,
Our P&P have screwed
up because they narrowed the scope of a letter ballot to be that of a "Working
Group Letter Ballot" instead of having a procedure for "letter ballots" and then
requiring Working Groups (among others) to use it.
Clearly the scope of
LMSC is both Sponsor and Working Group Ballots (ever since we became
"self-sponsored" and broke away from TCCC years ago). This shows up in our
P&P in clause 1 paragraph 3
- The P802 Sponsor Executive Committee serves as the Executive Committee for
both the sponsor ballot groups as well as the Standards Development
Groups. The standards sponsoring organization is designated as the LAN
MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) and includes the Sponsor Executive Committee, a
balloting pool for forming LMSC Sponsor balloting groups, and a set of
Standards Development Groups.
AND
- 3.1 Function
- The function of the Executive Committee is to oversee the operation of the
LAN MAN Standards Committee in the following ways:
- j) Oversee formation
of sponsor ballot groups and sponsor ballot process.
AND
- Clause 4
- The LMSC Sponsor Ballots will be administered by the Executive Committee
in accordance with Section 5 of the IEEE Standards Manual and Procedure 7 of
these rules.
There is, of course, no such thing as "the IEEE Standards
Manual" anymore.
The last one was published in 1992 (paper only).
I do
happen to have one, I could bring it to DFW.
The IEEE Standards Manual
clearly says its our job, not that of Balloting. The IEEE Standards Manual does
not mention balloting periods except for something about 60 days for mandatory
coordination.
It says, in part, (5.2) "The Sponsor is responsible for
supervising the standards project from inception to completion."
In sum,
since:
- 1) It is our responsibility
- 2) We don't explicitly call out the periods for Sponsor Letter Ballots
I believe that the (implicit) rule till we get things fixed is our
existing letter ballot procedures.
We gotta fix the obsolete reference to
"The IEEE Standards Manual" in clause 4.
Again, my
apologies.
Geoff
At 09:54 PM 2/4/2003 -0700, Roger B. Marks
wrote:
Geoff,
I object to your
characterization of my position. I don't see a record of me saying "we should
just defer to whatever staff decides to do". What I said is that the 802 rules
do not specify a minimum duration for sponsor ballots or sponsor ballot
recircs.
If we change the rules to specify minimum durations then, of
course, we ought to make sure that the Balloting Center runs our ballots
accordingly.
Under the status quo, I do not agree that we are in danger
of ballots being overturned on appeal for following the Balloting Center
defaults (29-30 days for a ballot and 9-10 for a recirc). Those defaults are
in accordance with LMSC and IEEE-SA rules. [The IEEE-SA doesn't say much about
this, although the Standards Companion says "Recirculations normally do not
take the time that regular ballots do--most are only about 10 days in
length."]
I would support an LMSC rules change to require minimum
durations on sponsor ballots and recircs. 30 days and 10 days would be my
preference.
Roger
At 4:06 PM -0800 03/02/04, Geoff Thompson
wrote:
Bob-
I believe that we screwed up on
this one. I thoroughly support your effort. The SA staff is in no better
shape than we are in this area and remember that, in spite of VERY long
standing practice we had NO FOUNDATION WHATSOEVER in our OR/P&P for any
recirc to less than 30 days for the majority of the last 20 years.
It
is my position that Roger was incorrect when he said that we should just
defer to whatever staff decides to do. This is an area where we could lose
an appeal. I believe that the SA should be providing balloting services to
Sponsors under Sponsor rules. Sponsors, in turn, are supposed to get their
P&P approved by AudCom. It is not a rigorous system. Paul ultimately is
on the hook for the decision.
I would like to take him off the
hook...
...assure that there
is adequate time for review
...and remove any uncertainty regarding our system.
My position will
be that, with an underlying rationale to see that the ballot is in hand for
at least 10 days, our rules need to say that all 802 ballot (i.e. Working
Group and LMSC) recirculations will be at least 15 days from the timestamp
of the announcing e-mail until the close of ballot.
Thanks for
grabbing the ball on this.
Geoff
At 12:41 PM 1/24/2003 -0800,
Grow, Bob wrote:
Colleagues:
This is to inform you
that I intend to propose a rules change to enforce minimum ballot periods
for our Sponsor ballots. I also intend to raise the issue of ballot
periods to ProCom for all SA ballots. It is now clear to me that the
ballot center does not enforce any particular ballot period. (I also
can't find any rules/P&P that requires them to enforce any arbitrary
minimum.) I believe the ballot center operates to a default -- the
ballot being open for some period of time on 10 dates in the US eastern
time zone (probably restricted by the announcement being sent during their
working hours). In an exchange trying to determine how the ballot
center counted "days", I postulate what I thought was a theoretical
question asking if the period would be have to be 10 days (i.e., 10 * 24
hours) or only 10 calendar dates. At the time the question was
posed, I thought the ballot center was enforcing a minimum ballot
period what I got in response was an offer for a SB recirculation
period a day shorter (i.e., 8.xxx days).
I just received a
particularly onerous example of what is being allowed by the ballot
center. I received the announcement slightly before noon Pacific
Time. The ballot closes on February 2 at 11:59 pm EST.
So,
for me, I have 9.375 days to respond (and four of those days are on a
weekend). For many international participants, they realistically
will have much less time with this ballot (many won't see the announcement
until their Monday morning). If one or two of you would like to
review my proposed rules change text prior to distribution to the SEC I
would appreciate a response.
Bob Grow
Chair, IEEE 802.3 Working
Group
bob.grow@ieee.org