Re: PAC: Thoughts about CS 2 (Auto vs. manual)

[Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@eng.sun.com>]

[tallen@sonic.net:]

| Jon wrote:
| | The problem is that we can't let people log into phone meetings at
| | random the way we can let them observe face-to-face meetings at
| | random; that just doesn't work.  Phone meetings substitute lamely
| | for face-to-face meetings *only* if everyone knows the other
| | participants and everyone knows who is present.  But if we're not
| | going to require face-to-face meetings, we can't simply substitute
| | phone meetings to perform the same screening function.
| 
| Would you explain why?

Because participation in a phone conference is too easy; it cannot
serve in itself as a protection against bad-faith committee
membership.  In particular, it doesn't provide any protection
against stacking the committee for the vote on a particular
question.  In a process built around three or four face-to-face
meetings a year (like NCITS), requiring prospective members to
attend, say, two meetings in a row before they can vote at least
prevents an organization (or any interest group) from stacking the
committee on particular decisions.  It cannot prevent long-term
domination by a really rich and determined organization, of
course, but I believe that this is less of a temptation than
simply signing up six people for a month.

| The context of this paragraph is allowing members to meet via
| phone instead of f2f; it's not clear to me how observers come into
| it.

I could not conduct business in a meeting in which I could not see
the participants and had no way of knowing who was in attendance.
I could not chair a phone meeting in which an unlimited number of
unknown people were allowed to participate.  I don't think I'm
alone in feeling this way (though it would be interesting to find
that out).

Even if you are comfortable with the idea that anyone could join a
phone conference, however, I think that the almost unlimited
opportunity for mischief afforded to anyone desiring to impede the
operation of the committee would constitute a strong argument
against this.

| Would your objection be assuaged if the first meeting had to be
| a face-to-face?

Yes -- if the subsequent addition of new members were also
conditioned upon participation in face-to-face meetings.

| How does the NCITS procedure deal with the initial meeting, at
| which no one is a member under the language you quoted?  Do they
| set up membership under a different procedure, or is the first
| meeting just a qualifying one?

I'm not quite sure.  I'm putting a copy of the "Organization,
Rules,and Procedures of NCITS" at

   http://metalab.unc.edu/bosak/wkproc/src/SD-2rev6e3.htm

for those brave enough to look.  It's pretty grim reading.

This appears to be the relevant section as far as TCs are concerned:

   3.4.NCITS Technical Committees (TCs)

   The work of NCITS is distributed among a number of TCs. New TCs
   are established only upon approval of NCITS. Upon completion of all
   currently assigned tasks and acquiescence by NCITS, they may:
   assume inactive status until required to resume activity for the
   required five-year review of published standards; provide
   interpretations of their standards; or undertake new project
   assignments. All work of the TCs is advisory to and subject to
   approval of NCITS.

>From this it appears that TCs are created by straightforward
resolution of the governing body, but we've said that we're not
going to have one.

Jon