RE: SUO: RE: Possible Ballot
John,
You stated: "In the case of SUMO, the attempt to promote it to the
status
of a candidate standard was premature."
SUMO and IFF were not proposed as 'candidate standards.' Both are
far from that state. The votes were only whether to 'commence work' on the
documents or not.
A vote on a Working Draft indicates satisfaction with the current
state of a document, which can still be far from complete. A vote on a
Committee Draft is to determine if it is ready to be forwarded for formal
IEEE balloting.
If you are refering to my actions as 'legalistic maneuvers,' I call
this following the rules, my job as chair. If IEEE issues clear guidance to
follow different rules, I'll certainly do so. For example, if abstains are
to be counted, I'll rule the SUMO did not pass and I won't put up with any
actions to change or redo the vote. I'll bet you'll want me to follow rules
in that case.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 10:04 AM
To: Horn, Graham
Cc: 'Frank Farance'; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: Re: SUO: RE: Possible Ballot
Graham,
I wholeheartedly agree:
> I suggest it was a bit more complicated than that. The
> critical feature was the fact that the closeness was accompanied by
> only a small number of Yes or No ballots. That meant that the real
> justification for proceeding on the basis of the vote is very tenuous.
>
> I suggest the real aim is to make quality decisions,
> and develop quality product, rather than "play rules".
As I said in earlier postings, every standards project I have
ever participated in tried to achieve a consensus or something
as close to a consensus as possible. If an important motion
seemed to have a significant number of objections, the vote
was usually postponed until the motion could be revised to
make it more acceptable.
In the case of SUMO, the attempt to promote it to the status
of a candidate standard was premature, and the plurality of
40% to 38% was about as far from consensus as one could get.
Since then, people on all three sides (including the
abstainers) have been bogged down in endless legalistic
maneuvers. That is a sure sign of a bad decision procedure.
John Sowa