I appreciate the input (and always happy to hear suggestions) but this
is something that I'll have to bring up with the Board's TC Process
subcommittee, who is currently working on a revision of the Process
document.
-Karl
wrote:
> It seems that several of us are in agreement on the desirability
> of creating an official category for members of a TC mailing list
> who are not also members (strictly speaking) of a TC. The
> question is what to call this category. Scott likes "nonvoting
> member" for marketing reasons. Eduardo and I dislike this
> nomenclature because in parliamentary practice (meaning Robert's,
> which specifies 99.9 per cent of the rules that govern formal TC
> operation) the word "member" means "voting member," "voting
> member" is frowned upon as a term containing a redundancy, and
> "nonvoting member" is considered to be a contradiction in terms.
>
> I suggest that we try for a category name that does not contain an
> internal contradiction but serves better for marketing purposes
> than "observer with posting privileges." How about "participant"?
> That would not only serve almost as well as "member" in the resume
> scenario but would also have the benefit of truthfully
> representing the nature of one's involvement in the process.
>
> Jon
>
> Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 13:34:26 -0700
> From: Eduardo Gutentag <>
> Cc: , , ,
>
>
> Seems like I said something that was open to misinterpretation. So,
> just in case, I'd like to clarify that my comment, "What I would like
> to see is for the Kavi process to follow the OASIS TC process and not
> the other way around..." was not meant in any way to disparage the
> participation of observers in the mailing lists. What I did mean,
> though, was that I did not think it was appropriate to munge TC
> participation with mailing list participation; that until very
> recently there was no language separating the two, and those who
> wanted to monitor the lists were invited to join the TCs, thus
> potentially inflating the ranks of the quorum-busters ;). When a
> chair goes to the Add a member section of the roster maintenance
> page, the chair is still told that someone can be added as a member
> of the TC because he/she has qualified according to the rules, which
> is false, and that some ballots may allow only members with voting
> privileges to vote, which is also false, because according to the
> process there are no such ballots, IOW only voting members (which
> is the only kind of *TC* members there are) can vote...
>
> So it's not that I'm unhappy with the functionality of the mailing
> lists; it the language and lack of differentiation between mailing
> lists and TCs that make me less than happy.
>
> Scott McGrath wrote:
> > Allow me to toss out a members' perspective, one that has little to do
> > with the strictly technical components of TC participation.
> > > People derive benefits from
> > 'being a member" of OASIS TCs for a lot of different reasons. Some such
> > reasons are strictly warm and fuzzy stuff--it makes them feel like an
> > important part of the process. Further, I would wager OASIS TC
> > membership is in more than a few employee performance evaluations, goals
> > etc as a measure of meeting some corporate objective.
> > > That said, we should be careful not to marginalize or sideline those
> > that can only contribute minimally and cannot commit to travel, meeting
> > attendance, concalls at 3am etc I think Jon's point is valid, these
> > members are an important part of the process and we should find ways to
> > enable that. (remembering these are dues paying members like all others)
> > > Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of the term non-voting member,
> > I think it serves the above needs well and I think one intuitively knows
> > what these mean. I think grouping those with some valid input with
> > other non-contributing Observers is less correct than grouping all
> > contributing persons as members, where only those seeking and abiding by
> > the restrictions have voting rights, quorum implications etc.
> > > Scott...
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [mailto:]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 2:37 PM
> > To:
> > Cc: ; ; ;
> >
> > Subject: Re: [chairs] Subtleties in the OASIS TC Member Attendance Rules
> > > I certainly don't disagree with the premise that the kavi
> > interface should align with the official OASIS TC process, but I
> > am finding the category that allows observers to post on occasion
> > to be extremely useful from an organizational standpoint. The
> > problem, as I see it, lies in calling this category "nonvoting
> > member," which from a parliamentary standpoint is a contradiction
> > in terms. The interface should be distinguishing between
> > "read/write" and "read-only" observers rather than between "voting"
> > and "nonvoting" members.
> > > | I'm working an fixes to Kavi to support this, but unfortunately
> > | it's not going well...
> > > Since we're starting to depend fairly heavily on the (badly named)
> > "nonvoting member" category, I'm actually glad to hear that you're
> > not making rapid progress on fixing this....
> > > Jon
>
> You may leave a Technical Committee at any time by visiting http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/chairs/members/leave_workgroup.php
>
>
>
--
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
office +1 978.667.5115 x206 mobile +1 978.761.1648
http://www.oasis-open.org
