SUO: RE: SUO E-mail Ballot -- Please Acknowledge receipt
Jim,
1) You asked for acknowledgement - so here it is.
2)I am a little confused by the question.
Ian Niles wrote - "I'd like to repropose the SUMO as a starter document for
the SUO
Working Group."
I read the 'a' as suggesting that this is one of potentially many
documents - in the process that has been agreed a number of times.
Admittedly he then later wrote - "First, I am proposing version 1.15 (the
latest version) of the SUMO as the starter document." And here the 'the'
could be interpreted as suggesting that this excludes all other proposals.
I am not clear from the wording of the question whether we are excluding
other proposals. It would help me to understand this if it was made clearer.
A further point.
You submitted a mail saying that we were in a discussion period on 17/7 (3
days ago) and now we are being asked to vote. Is there a rule saying that
only three days are allowed for discussion - I could have easily missed it.
The reason I raise this is that Lee raised a useful question on the
methodology of progressing. The merging process seems to be shrouded in
mystery - and as far as I (and others) can divine done at a coding level
deliberately avoiding the kind of issues Lee raised. This seems to me
unsatisfactory - and maybe relevant to whether we should accept Ian's SUMO -
in that in doing so we condone this kind of approach. Surely there needs to
be time to discuss the point Lee raised before we vote.
I do realise that it is important to make progress - but progress is not
necessarily measured just in terms of voting to accept documents - their
contents and how they produced is also relevant.
Regards
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil
[mailto:James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil]
Sent: 20 July 2001 05:31
To: 'matthew.r.west@is.shell.com '; 'shams@pnu.ac.ir ';
'michael.f.uschold@boeing.com '; 'mcdavid@us.ibm.com ';
'rekent@ontologos.org '; 'phil.jackson@computer.org ';
'cassidy@micra.com '; 'zarri@ivry.cnrs.fr '; 'phayes@ai.uwf.edu ';
Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I; 'Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au ';
'fgm@fla.fujitsu.com '; 'martin_king@uk.ibm.com '; 'sofia@gia.ist.utl.pt
'; 'fnc@mitre.org '; 'chris.angus@kalido.com '; 'tmk@lsc.co.uk ';
'john.r.velman@boeing.com '; 'iniles@teknowledge.com ';
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Subject: SUO E-mail Ballot -- Please Acknowledge receipt
ATTN Voting Members of SUO WG,
1. Please immediately acknowledge receipt of this email letter ballot. If I
do not receive within 3-days, I will contact you again. We want to make
sure all voting members receive this ballot. The wording of this ballot was
developed and reviewed by the SUO Policies & Procedures Subgroup.
2. This message is to Ballot the question :
"Should the IEEE P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology Working Group
commence work on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) version 1.15
[June 22, 2001] posted at http://suo.ieee.org/Merge.txt, with the intent of
developing it into the final SUO document?
Note 1: See background information below for more details.
Note 2: This may be one of several candidate documents to be
combined and aligned into the final SUO document via the consensus building
process."
3. By 15 Aug '01, please vote YES (comments optional), NO (comments
required), or ABSTAIN (comments optional). Please send your votes and
comments directly to me, but you are also free to post to the SUO list and
openly discuss this topic.
4. This vote will pass if it receives a majority of YES vs. NO votes.
ABSTAINS and non-votes are not counted in determining majority. The Chair
may vote to make or break a tie. As all voting members will have received
and acknowledge receipt of this ballot and will therefore have an
opportunity to vote, there will be no quorum of votes required for this
motion to be determined.
5. Non-voting participants are welcome to express opinions and submit
comments.
6. Background:
a. The purpose of this vote is to determine the level of consensus
we have for focusing work on this document. In other words, we need to
decide if we are going to go down this path or not. A working group may
decide to work on more than one document.
b. The primary purpose of this vote is NOT to propose improvements
to the document, unless they are major enough for you to vote against
focusing work on this document. However, such general improvement comments
are welcome and will be resolved (but not unless and until the vote passes,
since there would be no sense resolving comments if the group does not want
to proceed
with this document.
c. If this vote passes, this document will change from being the
work (and under the control) of a group of individuals to being the work
(and under the control) of the SUO WG. A Technical Editor will be appointed
or elected, who will incorporate WG-approved changes into the document.
This does not require frequent formal votes for every change. A better
approach
for daily or weekly updates is to develop consensus by resolving objections,
as we did
when revising the Scope and Purpose. In other words, (1) the Technical
Editor leads the discussion by processing the issues and suggestions; (2)the
issues/suggestions identify proposed additions, changes, or deletions to the
wording in the document; (3) the Technical Editor asks the WG for any
objections. Items that do not have clear consensus would be accumulated for
later, more formal processing, i.e., the proposer of the issue/suggestion is
responsible for making a formal proposal (with a WG vote) for the proposed
change.
Jim Schoening
Chair, SUO WG