RE: [802SEC] 802.20 affirmation
Tony,
I agree that the rules for intial membership in a working group are a concern. We have been concerned about them for many years, but we haven't gotten around to changing them. Up until now, the main concern has been bloating of the membership by people who stop attending after the first meeting and subsequent difficulty with quorum until they age off the list. The influx of new people for the first meeting of the group in this case was unique in my experience and is a reason for concern. For the future, the rules should be changed.
Perhaps I can shed some light on the existing rule. If my recollection is correct, we only started having study groups in the rules in the late 80's or early 90's - about the time we were adding the first new working groups 802.9 and 802.10 (prior work group formations had been from reorganization of existing work). The rule on initial voting rights was in the rules when I joined in 1985 and I think dates from the initial rules around 1980. At that time, new work investigation was done on a more ad hoc basis and there was nothing in the 802 rules about study groups. We should have had better foresight and modified the rule when we added exec study groups.
I also think that the rules should mention leadership/standards development experience in addition to technical experience as criteria for chairs as that is at least as significant to the ability to lead a group successfully.
Pat
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Jeffree [mailto:tony@jeffree.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 7:51 AM
To: pat_thaler@agilent.com
Cc: r.b.marks@ieee.org; stds-802-sec@ieee.org
Subject: RE: [802SEC] 802.20 affirmation
At 18:38 19/03/2003 -0700, pat_thaler@agilent.com wrote:
>That said, lack of sufficient experience in 802 seems a bit weak as a
>basis for rejecting the election results. Some previous chairs have had
>little more than the experience gained while running their study group.
>Granted that having so little experience was a handicap in running their
>groups and they required extra mentoring to get over the bumps in the road
>so it isn't an ideal situation. Perhaps the answer is that 802 is raising
>the desired qualifications based on past experience.
Pat -
The point at issue for me was, and still is, that the candidates didn't
even have the experience gained while running the study group, or even of
having attended the SG meetings. Neither, apparently, did more than 50% of
the people voting in the election.
When we were discussing changes to the rules for voting rights a while
back, I seem to remember various people arguing strongly for the position
that the normal rules for gaining a vote (showing up for at least 3
meetings, of which at least 2 plenaries) were so designed to ensure a high
probability that people who just show up for a meeting or two don't get
enfranchised. I would personally like to know what is so different about
the initial meeting of a WG that would ever have persuaded us to do
anything different.
Regards,
Tony