On Aug 29, 2008, at 10:23 AM, Chris Wilson wrote:
James Graham wrote:
It seems to me that several aspects of this procedure have not been
followed:
Speaking for myself as chair, as I was chairing the call yesterday,
and although I think Mike and I are in sync on this I want to offer
him the opportunity to give a different take:
The Charter says: "However, if a decision is necessary for timely
progress, but after due consideration of different opinions,
consensus is not achieved, the Chair should put a question (allowing
for remote, asynchronous participation using, for example, email and/
or web-based survey techniques) and record a decision and any
objections, and consider the matter resolved, at least until new
information becomes available."
On this topic, there has been much asynchronous participation
already. I explicitly listed this as a topic for discussion for the
telecon, to invite those who might not be able to participate to
offer their input or ask for the matter to handled in some other way
in order to incorporate their input. (There were, BTW, no explicit
regrets for this telecon.) I also elicited different points of view
at length during the issue discussion on the telecon. There was, in
effect, no significant dissent represented on IRC or the telecon,
and I considered consensus to be achieved - thereby requiring no
further question to be put to the group. I did explicitly mention
the last clause - if anyone has a significant objection to this
approach, backed with reasoning that addresses in some way the
examples offered in the issue exposition (see the issue on tracker
or the IRC log for references) or explaining why in their opinion
those examples should not be relevant, then we will, as per our
Charter, revisit the issue. Barring new information being
available, I'd like us to make progress, and I don't see a
significant reason not to consider the current proposal as the right
resolution, and representing consensus of the group. If you have
another solution that solves the problem (representing "multi-
dimensional" header semantics that are relatively common cases) and
could be considered better, I'm more than happy to revisit this issue.
I wrote my previous reply before reading this, however, I would state
that I strongly disagree with this bendinf of the process.
The chairs are NOT bound to put each and every issue to a vote or
poll, when we feel consensus (= "general agreement", not unanimity)
has been achieved. And, of course, after putting such a question to
the group, it would still be Mike and my responsibility to declare a
decision anyway.
Clearly since the issue has been (and continues to be) controversial
in email, the declaration of consensus was premature. Since there is
not consensus, I ask the Chairs to either leave the issue for further
discussion or put the question to the Working Group. (I would prefer
the former).
I personally helped draft the "Decision Policy" section of the
charter, and I can tell you that its intent was specifically to
prevent decisions from being made in telecons, since not all
participants are willing and able to attend them, and so important
points of view are disenfranchised. There is a temptation to make
power plays based on who is or isn't present. In fact, the very fact
that there was no objection to the decision on the telecon and that
there has been objection by email proves this to be the case in this
instance.
I hope such a violation of the charter (which, again, is specifically
designed to prevent binding technical decisions from being made in
telecons) does not happen again.
Regards,
Maciej
