RE: [chairs] How to handle applicants and disclosures re TC participation

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

Currently the Roster permits individuals to be assigned any of the following roles:

 

Applicant
Leave of Absence
Member
OASIS Staff Contact
Observer
Prospective Member
Secretary
TC Chair
TC Convener
Voting Member
Voting Member - Probation

1. I would like to see clear definitions for when ALL, not just some of these, should be used. In particular, are some of these deprecated and will go away in the future? Ideally I would like to see a state transition diagram or state transition table which indicates how an individual can move from one state to another.

 

2. There is a clear design problem of mixing Jobs and States under one category: Role. In some cases this is not a problem, e.g. OASIS Staff Contact. But what if a Secretary loses his or her vote? If their status is changed to "Member" he or she will not be able to perform necessary functions on the web site, but if left as Secretary he or she will retain the right to vote, the count of voting members for quorum will be wrong, etc. The same goes for TC Chair.

 

3. It is not a major point, but Secretaries and Chairs should probably not be able to change the role of an OASIS Staff Contact. At a minimum this would help prevent accidents.

 

Hal

 

-----Original Message-----
From: James Bryce Clark [mailto:jamie.clark@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 2:47 PM
To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [chairs] How to handle applicants and disclosures re TC participation

    TC chairs share responsibility for maintaining the roster of their TCs, using our web-based tools on the TC's member "Roster" page.  In doing so, please comply with our April 2005 changes to the TC membership rules in Section 2(d) of the OASIS TC Process [1]:

    TC Observers:   Under the TC Process, any person with an OASIS account (that is, either an individual OASIS member or the employee/representative of an organizational OASIS member) is free to join any OASIS TC as an observer.  Observers have read-only access to TC proceedings.
    TC Members:   Before the April 2005 TC Process revisions, an eligible person who wanted to become a member of an existing technical committee was subject to a waiting queue before acquiring membership.  Please note we *changed* this rule in April.  Now, TC applicants who represent organizational members require the approval of their organization's primary representative.  As discussed earlier [2], once a TC member joins, voting rights are contingent on attendance; but TC membership is not.  
    Applicants have no status on a TC until and unless approved.  OASIS staff is working on additional automation of this applicant process.  In the short run, to help make this clear, we are renaming the class of not-yet-approved TC applicants as "Applicants".  New applicants will queue as "applicants", not as "prospective members". 
    Disclosing TC Membership:   Answers to inquiries regarding membership of a TC should use the same data we provide on the TC's public roster page.  That page lists the persons who have given their permission to be disclosed.   Observers and applicants have made no commitment to a TC, and should not be described as having a relationship to that committee.
    "Prospective Members".  This classification was previously used for persons in queue for TC membership.  Unfortunately, in a few TCs, some would-be TC members remained in queue in this state, and never were advanced to "member."  We asked all TC chairs to review and clear up any backlog on their rosters, prior to the April TC Process changes. [3]   Now that we're approaching the 60th day under the rule revisions, we plan to clean this up by *retiring* that role, except in connection with newly launched TCs.  We will send separate instructions to you about roster cleanup shortly.

    Best regards and thanks for your attention. 

~   James Bryce Clark
~   Director, Standards Development, OASIS
~   jamie.clark@oasis-open.org

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#2.4
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/chairs/200506/msg00010.html
[3] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/chairs/200503/msg00028.html