RE: [chairs] OASIS Organizational Voting is Somewhat Absurd?

A couple of concrete proposals that don't involve reforming the voting procedure itself:

One action that might serve to strengthen credibility would be independent peer reviews. Journals ask domain experts to review manuscripts because editors don't and aren't expected to have the subject matter expertise to screen out the products of "FUDfests" (whatever they are). Knowing something's been scrutinized and passed by domain experts, one's vote to accept a spec would feel more justified.

I appreciate "Executive Summaries" and the like, explaining the significance, intended uses, etc., for a given spec. This would benefit those of us who are less technically knowledgeable than is generally assumed about OASIS participants. Understanding better what the work product is for can be a good incentive to participate in the voting. This might also help the non-OASIS world see how these strange-looking documents and all the acronyms have value.

Roger Winters

LegalXML Member Section

Secretary, Steering Committee

Electronic Court Records Technical Committee

Editor

Representative to Member Section Steering Committee

From: Duane Nickull [mailto:dnickull@adobe.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 9:53 AM
To: Wachob, Gabe; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [chairs] OASIS Organizational Voting is Somewhat Absurd?

"Does anyone else feel this way?"

I agree that it may be suboptimal. Do you have any concrete plans or suggestions for our perusal? While voting to approve something you haven't read is a relatively hollow gesture, it has to be balanced against the other end of the spectrum whereby a group of three members could get together, have a FUDfest and create some meaningless specification and get it approved as an OASIS standard. This lack of scrutiny by all of us weakens the perception and credibility of OASIS as a credible standards development organization.

I would be interested in hearing concrete proposals and am open to considering a new model if others are keen too.

Duane

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