Re: Please Open ISSUE-34 (good standing)

On 16/09/2014 14:10, David (Standards) Singer wrote:

> I think that:
> 
> * good standing needs to move from being a normal part of the process, to being a tool available to groups and their chairs; so define it but don’t require it
> * a group intending to have good standing available as a tool needs to say so in their charter (“may use the good standing process”)
> * we need to look at other places in the process where it is used (e.g. TAG and AB, formally elected groups)
> * on the question of chair discretion
>   — it’s fine for the chair to say “to affect this decision/vote, you need to be in good standing” (e.g. because it really needs people to be up to speed);  but only if participants have the opportunity to get into good standing;  it’s not needed that good standing is used for every decision
>   — it is not OK for the chair to use discretion about who is affected; it’s either a uniform requirement, or not; you cannot exclude person A for lacking good standing while accepting person B who also lacks it

The whole "good standing" section 6.2.1.7 in the Process seems
to me the parangon of administrative blah-blah introduced for
good reasons but impossible to apply, sorry to say the least.

1. Chairs have no tools to monitor that. With large Groups, that's
   just 100% unfeasible, sorry. And this is not only hypothetical;
   I have tried, during more than 9 months, to monitor good and bad
   standing. I eventually gave up, that's too complex to handle
   given the rules of 6.2.1.7.

2. the rules to reach good standing are different for a participant
   joining for first ftf and a participant joining after first ftf

3. the Chairs must agree with the Team Contact to declare a bad
   standing. Two consequences: the Team Contact can veto a Chairs'
   decision - and that's really really bad - and it could cost time
   to reach that agreement - and that's equally bad.

4. 6.2.1.7 still reads that "attendance by one representative of an
   organization satisfies the meeting attendance requirement for all
   representatives of the organization". It is then practically
   impossible to declare an individual in bad standing. The CSS WG
   co-chairs did want to declare someone in bad standing - for good
   reasons - at some point in the past and could not because of this
   provision in the Process... Basically, this sentence is the reason
   why Bad Standing has almost never been declared.

5. "When a participant risks losing Good Standing, the Chair and Team
   Contact are expected to discuss the matter with the participant and
   the participant's Advisory Committee representative". This is far too
   expensive and time-consuming. Chairs should have a form with two
   steps "About to declare bad standing for XXXX" and "Bad standing
   declared for XXX" with automatic notification of the AC-Rep and the
   participant, period. The former gives a week to the recipients
   to have a chat with the Chairs; if nothing happened, bad standing
   is then formally declared by the latter; period.

Then Dave said above "it is not OK for the chair to use discretion about
who is affected". I soooo totally disagree. Chairs know the context of
each of the members of their WG. They are the only ones who can turn
a bureaucratic automatic mechanism into something practical and
pragmatic. A uniform Standing process would be not only totally
useless, but probably dangerous in terms of image of "old and too
bureaucratic" for the Consortium. Example: member A based in Europe
did not attend 3 last FTFs in Europe and US East Coast; that's bad.
member B based in Australia did not attend same 3 FTFs; that's more
acceptable given the distance...

AFAIK, the oldest WG in the Consortium, the CSS WG, has never used
Standing. Each time we discussed it, it was either impractical or
impossible. I think we should be able to ditch it _entirely_ except in
the case of AB and TAG.

</Daniel>

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2014 13:07:01 UTC