SUO: SUMO Ballot Results and some advice
At 13:08 2001-08-17 +0200, Chris Partridge wrote:
>
> Dear Jim,
>
> I share the same feelings as john-josef.
> It seems to me more important to try and gain concensus than push through a
> motion that has had significant resistance on such a slight 'majority'.
>
> As with john-josef, if it is possible I would change my ABSTAIN to NO, to
> ensure that we have time to gain concensus.
>
> Regards
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of
> jjc
> Sent: 17 August 2001 04:45
> To: jim.s3@juno.com; ---john-josef
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: Re: SUO: SUMO Ballot Results
>
>
>
>
> I think it is counter-productive to pass this motion with the tabulated
> results. it divides and further distances the community of discussants from
> each other. today is 16aug2001 and i understand that the voting/ballot
> closed yesterday 15aug2001. i think however that the vote results should
> have been made public to the voters long before today. after all, there
> must
> be nothing secret about how the votes proceeded from day to day. if today
> were 15aug2001, i would change my vote from ABSTAIN to a definite NO. i do
> not like to see many in this community of discussants lose interest. it
> must
> not be just win or lose on a vote but what lays ahead that we must be
> concerned about. Again, if the procedures (!) allow it, i change my vote
> from ABSTAIN to NO.
> john-josef costandi
Sorry, that is not how ballots work. The ballots are received during the balloting period and tallied after closing. There is no running count. And what is the purpose of seeing a running count? It's purpose can't be for offering your opinion, which you are free to do and makes no difference whether your ballot is submitted on the first day or the last day. It's purpose is for influencing the outcome of the ballot ... "the running count today is in favor of X by 3 votes, so let's get 4 voters are against X", right? That is not very productive.
If you both felt you wanted to vote No, they you should have voted No. For example, in Chris' Abstain comments (see E-mail of 2001-07-26 14:10), he stated:
"I do not wish to stop people moving forward with this if they think it will be useful - so I think it wrong to vote No. ..."
Chris's E-mail went on further to give a very reasonable explanation for his position. For John-Josef, his comments 2001-07-22 19:14 were simply
"i acknowledge receipt of the ballot. I vote "ABSTAIN".
Again, John-Josef's ballot was acceptable (but, in my opinion, could have had more words).
To make the committee's work more productive, you need to help with the balloting process. This means:
- If your position is X, then vote X (but not Y or Z). I have no explanation for why you voted Y when you meant to vote X. And I'm not the only one that gets confused by these kind of mis-votes. So you need to "represent your position" when you vote. And if your vote is Abstain or No, you need to supply comments that are useful for consensus-building (i.e., a better understanding of your position).
- For standards committees, if you have issues to resolve, you need to get them out as soon as possible. This does not imply that issues are resolved in a "first-come-first-served" order, but that a relatively complete set of issues are presented for resolution and consensus-building.
- Don't "sandbag". Some people like to "sandbag" their issues, i.e., waiting until later on in the process to raise significant issues ... hoping to be disruptive as possible. I hope we don't have that in this WG because (1) it is very unproductive for the committee (actually, many "sandbaggers" hope to be disruptive in this way), and (2) the "sandbagger" might have his/her issues ignored because they are too late in the process (one can legitimately make the point that the presenter hand ample opportunity to raise his/her issues).
- If you have issues, submit a proposal for changed words or improvements. Be sure to supply suggested additions/changes for standards wording. In my experience in committees, everyone loves to be a critic until they actually put their own proposal on the table. Once the person makes a proposal (and suffers all the comments), typically (1) he/she has a better understanding that making proposals for standards wording is hard stuff, and (2) he/she is more constructive in his/her future comments, i.e., his/her comments address specific improvements or objections.
Someone had made the point that a slim majority was not very strong support. Yes, this is true, but we (SUO) need to get at least 75% support for our final work. Hopefully, this 75% will come from incremental improvement: listening to participants issues and resolving them over the time (FYI, this is the normal standards process). Gradually, we will move the document(s) forward and improve upon them. Note: the *process* is incremental, but the changes to the documents aren't necessarily incremental (==> committee can approve substantial changes for subsequent drafts).
Also, I think it is important to distinguish between a "starter document" (they are called "base documents" elsewhere, the name is irrelevant), and a "draft standard for sponsor ballot". These documents (SUMO and IFF) are "starter documents". I voted Yes on the SUMO document because I thought it was a reasonable starting point and, more importantly, we **do** need a starting point. So far, I'm looking favorably at the IFF document, too, but I haven't finished reading it. So even though I might vote Yes on both documents as "starter documents", I would have definitely voted No for submitting them to sponsor ballot, and would have voted No within sponsor ballot <-- both documents are not ready as final standards (not a surprise; that's why we have a Working Group to develop them).
OK, so I've made my point this time (and other times) that this is an incremental process ... which means we have to have document(s) in various states of progress.
I have one more observation: several people had changed their votes from Yes to No after the workshop last week. I believe there was some Goodness in those changed votes. Several of the participants got to see/hear presentations and had a better understanding of the issues/topics at hand. Normally, standards committees do meet face-to-face (F2F) ... the F2F time is very important for consensus-building. Currently, we do everything electronically, but I'm convinced that we should have some F2F meetings (maybe 2-3 times a year?). I know there are cost/schedule issues for everyone, but I believe this would be a useful for the committee's progress.
The F2F meetings would make us all more informed about our voting ("Ah, that's what I'm really voting for, against, etc.", e.g., as reported by several people who attended last week's workshop). Furthermore, the F2Fs help us discover what is implicit (what we think the document says) vs. what is explicit (agreement among committee members on interpretation of the standards words in the document). These kind of meetings will help us in the future when the committee does interpretations of the (future) standard. IEEE says that they can make their facilities available for meetings (including teleconference capability).
FYI, I've been speaking with IEEE folks about holding a meeting on the topic IEEE standards process. This wouldn't be a SUO meeting, but SUO participants would be invited to attend. IEEE says they can have a meeting and a teleconference on this topic this Fall, and (hopefully) again 3-4 months later. Even though the meeting isn't particular to SUO, it would allow us to see/hear each other ... which can lead towards better working relationships (the "people factor" in standards committee work). Let me know if this is of interest to you.
-FF
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