RE: [chairs] TC Membership Rules - Take 2

["Hal Lockhart" <hlockhar@bea.com>]

Just for the record, I would be happy to follow the interpretations that
Steve has suggested. I agree that they would address the issues I have
raised. I was trying to be a "strict constructionist" and work from the TC
Process as written.

Hal

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Anderson [mailto:sanderson@opennetwork.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 1:34 PM
> To: Hal Lockhart; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [chairs] TC Membership Rules - Take 2
>
>
> Comments inline.
> --
> Steve
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Hal Lockhart [mailto:hlockhar@bea.com]
> > Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 12:02 PM
> > To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
> > Subject: [chairs] TC Membership Rules - Take 2
> >
> >
> > I raised this issue before, but the thread went off in other
> directions and
> > I did not have the cycles to pursue the matter. I was also
> waiting until the
> > new TC process was published to see which points had been clarified.
> >
> > Let me start by disposing with a couple of points raised last time.
> >
> > 1. Some argued that the process should allow for chair's discretion. I
> > agree, however this should only be necessary in rare,
> borderline cases. This
> > note is about bread and butter decisions that come up every
> week, not once
> > or twice a year. If chairs are forced to constantly make these
> decisions on
> > their own, it will mean different TCs use different procedures
> and create an
> > impression of arbitrary use of power by chairs. Neither of these is
> > desirable for an open standards organization. The secretaries and chairs
> > need to know at the begining of every meeting whether or not they have
> > quorum. It should be possible to determine this by a well
> defined algorithm
> > 95% of the time.
> >
>
> Completely agree.
>
> > 2. Some have suggested that attendance calculations can always
> begin with a
> > meeting that was attended, because that will always be true of a member.
> > This is only true of people who join at the initial meeting.
> Under the old
> > rules people could join the TC without ever attending. Under
> the new rules,
> > they cannot join without attending, but we are now required to
> enforce the
> > same rules during the probationary period, so the same condition (never
> > attending) can and does occur.
> >
> > I suggest that the following points be clarified and that the "official"
> > interpretation of the process be made a part of the TC
> guidelines. The two
> > relevant sections of the TC Process are:
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> > ---------------
> > 2. d.
> >
> > During the probationary period the Prospective Member must
> follow the same
> > attendance rules as a TC Member, as defined in the section
> "Termination of
> > TC Membership"; if attendance requirements are not met the Prospective
> > Member will not become a Member at the end of the probationary
> period and
> > must re-apply for membership.
> >
> > 2. f.
> >
> > * A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC
> upon his first
> > failure to be present during the roll call at the beginning of
> the meeting
> > of two out of every three successive meetings of the TC.
> Membership shall be
> > terminated if the member fails to be present during the roll call of the
> > next meeting following transmittal of the warning or if the member
> > consistently fails to be present during the roll call of two of
> every three
> > meetings thereafter.
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> > ---------------
> >
> > These leave a lot of questions open.
> >
> > A) "A member shall be warned by mail from the chair of the TC
> upon his first
> > failure to be present..."
> >
> > The choice of the word "first" seems deliberate, but ambigious. Does a
> > person ever have to be notified a second time? I am not talking
> about the
> > individual that misses one or two meetings a month. We can get
> rid of them
> > with the "consistently fails" clause. I am talking about a
> member who misses
> > two meetings, gets warned, attends every meeting for six months and then
> > misses two in a row. Do I have to warn them? Should I drop them
> immediately
> > without warning? Are they entitled to a warning per month? per
> year? per TC
> > lifetime?
> >
>
> The ambiguity here forces me to ignore the "first" qualifier, and to
> always warn a member about possible termination.  In fact, I
> don't see any
> value to the clause about terminating a member who "consistently
> fails to be
> present".  There should be a very object approach to determining
> termination
> based on attendance.  The area of discretion by the chairs is
> useful, however,
> for giving grace to someone who, by normal calculations, should
> be terminated.
> For instance, if a family matter causes someone to miss a meeting
> following a
> warning, the chairs could choose to act in that case.  But making the
> calculations fuzzy doesn't seem useful to me.
>
> > B) Now let's consider the actual calculation. Warning is required in two
> > cases: (P=Present, N=Not Present) N-N and N-P-N. The first half
> of the rule
> > says if they miss the next meeting, they are out. But what if
> they attend?
> > We have N-N-P and P-N-P (considering only the window of the last three
> > meetings. In neither case do we warn them, because even though
> N-N-P is 2
> > out of 3, it is not the "first failure."
> >
>
> I disagree.  In the N-N-P case, I think the process should be
> interpreted to
> issue another warning, since the member has in fact missed 2 out
> of the last
> 3 meetings (regardless of the fact that the 1 that was attended
> was the most
> recent meeting).  Taking this approach eliminates the problems that are
> accurately described in the following two paragraphs.
>
> > Again, if they attend the next meeting, there is no problem, so
> let's assume
> > they don't. We have: N-P-N and N-P-N. Since they both missed 2
> out of three
> > again, it seems like I should throw them out, but I don't see how I can
> > under the rules given. They did not miss a meeting immediately
> after being
> > warned and I would not consider that a total history of
> ...P-P-P-P-N-N-P-N
> > or ...P-P-P-P-P-N-P-N meets the criteria of "consistently
> fails". So I guess
> > they stay in limbo for an unspecified period until a pattern develops.
> >
> > The other thing that bothers me is that P-N-P-N-N gets you
> thrown out, but
> > P-N-N-P-N does not. This seems arbitrary and unfair.
> >
>
> Addressed above.
>
> > C) During probation, we are supposed to "follow the same
> rules." I presume
> > that means that if they do N-N or N-P-N then we warn them that
> they may not
> > become become members. If they miss the next meeting, we
> immediately drop
> > them back to observers and do not continue calculating their attendance
> > pattern. If they attend, then we fall into the "consistently
> fails" case,
> > except that it is unlikely that this condition will be satisfied before
> > their probation is over. Presumably the intent is that the probationary
> > period and membership period be considered a continous sequence for the
> > purposes of calculating membership elibility. In other words, we do not
> > "reset the count" when someone becomes a member.
> >
> > However, if the TC meets only monthly, then the person will
> become a voting
> > member before they can possibly fail the attendance criterion.
> In this case,
> > it is even more important to consider all meetings as a
> continous sequence.
> > Does everyone agree with this interpretation?
> >
>
> I didn't interpret "follow the same rules" to require warning a
> prospective
> member after missing two out of three meetings, only voting members.
> I interpreted it to speak to the burden on the prospective member
> to attend,
> rather than on the chair/secretary to provide the benefit of a
> warning.  If a
> prospective member doesn't attend at least 2/3 of the meetings
> during their
> probationary period, they simply don't become members.  This can
> be expressed
> in the email sent to them when they initially request membership.
>  However,
> I wouldn't be opposed to Hal's interpretation above either.
>
> > D) I don't want to start a thread on Kavi bugs, but the current Kavi
> > calculations about membership don't seem to follow any
> consistent algorithm
> > as far as I can tell. Ideally, Kavi should follow the algorithm
> determined
> > by the outcome of this thread. If this is not possible, Kavi
> should NOT send
> > out any messages about membership transitions, because they just create
> > confusion.
> >
>
> Hearty +1.
>
> > Hal
> >
>