Re: [chairs] Subtleties in the OASIS TC Member Attendance Rules

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

(I wrote this before seeing Eduardo's response, but I think that
my answer mostly agrees with his.)

| Suppose a member misses 2 meetings in a row. They are sent a
| warning and they attend the next meeting. So far so good. However,
| unless they attend the NEXT meeting, they will lose membership, as
| they will have missed 3 out of 4 meetings. In other words, the
| pattern N-N-Y-N should be treated the same as N-Y-N-N.

The requirement is that people have to attend two meetings in
every three-meeting window, and if they don't, they get a warning.
So the state transitions in your example go like this:

1. Y-N-N warning sent

2. N-N-Y OK (resets the counter)

3. N-Y-N warning sent ...

The language "or if the member consistently fails to attend
two out of every three meetings" was intended to prevent people
from gaming the system by repeating this cycle ad infinitum.  

Before we get into an extended discussion of this interpretation,
I hasten to add that the language could use some work.  It was
copied from the rules for ANSI committee membership, as expressed
in NCITS V3 rules as follows:

   Voting members of NCITS and its subgroups shall be terminated
   under the following conditions:

   a) The principal and all alternate representative(s) shall be
      warned in writing upon failure of the organization to:

      (1) attend two out of three successive meetings, in which
	  case the membership shall be terminated if not
	  represented at the next meeting; or

      (2) return 80% of the total letter ballots (non-accelerated)
	  closing during the present calendar quarter, in which
	  case the membership shall be terminated if the member
	  fails to return at least 80% of the total letter ballots
	  (non-accelerated) closing during the subsequent quarter.

Note that the NCITS/ANSI rules assume a delegate membership
structure rather than an individual expert membership structure.

| (i). A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC
| upon their first failure to attend two out of every three
| successive meetings of the TC. Membership shall be terminated if
| the member fails to attend the next meeting following transmittal
| of the warning or if the member consistently fails to attend two
| out of every three meetings.

In light of some experience with the TC process, I think the best
fix (and the one that best represents the original intention of
the committee that drafted this language) would simply be to
change "shall be terminated" to "may be terminated."  In other
words, make this attendance pattern grounds for termination, but
leave the final disposition to the chair.  I know that this is
basically what we had in mind.

An alternative would be to officially legitimize the
pseudo-category "member, nonvoting" conferred by the Kavi
interface and say that (voting) members who don't attend two out
of every three meetings are automatically shifted into this
category so that they don't count towards a quorum.  The original
design deliberately prohibited nonvoters from posting, but I now
think that this may have been an unnecessary restriction.

Having said that, I have to add that I'm not eager to continue
this discussion in email.  Process design issues have to be hashed
out face-to-face.

Jon