SUO: Establishing voting rights
> SUO Participants:
>
> Now that our project has officially been chartered by IEEE (IEEE
> P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology Working Group), we need to establish
> voting rights.
>
> Default Policies & Procedures (P&Ps) are provided to us by the IEEE
> Computer Society Standards Activity Board (see
> http://www.computer.org/standards/ORIENT/p&ptoc.htm) but these do not
> specify voting rights within a working group. Rights in most standards
> groups are based on attendance at meetings (usually 2 of 3 prior
> meetings), but since this group is working via email reflectors, we'll
> need to establish our own rules.
>
> I propose the following:
>
> SUO Voting Rights Clause:
>
> Voting rights shall be granted to any individual with a material interest
> in the development of this standard who either was a participant of this
> group during its formation (see para. d.) or has been a participant for a
> waiting period of 6-months.
>
> a. 'Voting Rights' refers to the list of who may vote on formal
> ballots taken by the SUO WG. If an individua does not have voting rights,
> he or she may still submit comments on a vote and participate in
> discussions to resolve those comments.
>
> b. 'Material Interest' is defined (still seeking a definition for
> this)
>
> c. A 'participant' is any individual (IEEE membership NOT required
> or expected) who submits an application
> (http://suo.ieee.org/SUO-Participants-Jan2001.xls) and participates in any
> one of the following ways (subscribes to any SUO discussion list, posts
> messages to lists, comments on documents, or any other actions the Chair
> deems to be participation).
>
> d. Voting rights will be granted dfathered to all those who
> participated in this WG prior to Jan 9, 2001 and who submit an application
> form within 30 days of announcement of approval of this clause. New
> participants must submit the application and then wait 6-months.
>
End of Clause.
The 6-month waiting period is consistent with the typical
'attendance at 2 of 3 prior meetings' rule and is needed to avoid an influx
of voters members to sway a particular vote.
> Comments are requested on the above proposed clause. Anyone else is
> welcome to submit their own version or approach to this need. Since we
> haven't established voting rights, we can't very well take a formal vote
> on this clause, so let's just work through any comments and see if we can
> reach consensus.
>
Jim Schoening