Notes on telecon on Letter Ballot #1
Title: Notes on telecon on Letter Ballot #1
Colleagues,
Here are some notes from today's telecon. Since the working group letter ballot process is in process starting tomorrow, it would be good to have all voting members apprised of the consensus and clarifications to the process. For that reason I'm sending the notes to the reflector.
Best Regards,
Michael
Discussion of LB 1 instructions document
Vivek walked through the document:
Secton 1 Introduction
- Change last day to April 30
- Q: If we don’t get 50% on May 1, what does the group do after that, esp in San Diego
- A: If we do get 50% or more the goal of group is to get through the comments as quickly as we can
- Q: What is the purpose of this motion?
- A: To initiate the next step in the process, that is the first reaching for group approval. The outcome of this motion is the results of the LB. Each Voting Member should submit their vote on this motion, along with their comments.
- Q: Is 30 day standard?
- A: LMSC requires a minimum of 30 days. .11 uses 40 days
- Q: Could we make it 40 days? Should we get the group sense on how long it should be?
- A: Chair decides 30 days.based on the evolution of the draft
- C: We don’t see that based on the behavior of the group would need a longer time. Most people provide comments at the very end of the period
- C: If we don’t meet the return rate we can extend the period
- C: If the doc isn’t the quality we won’t get approval rate. That is expected in the beginning. 35% approval would be wonderful
- C: There should be a specific time on the last day.
- A: Because of the vagaries of time the chair thought it would be OK to allow the full day
Section 2 Relevant Documents
- We will send a copy of draft to other SDOs, including IETF
- Q: Will the other SDO’s comments count in the letter ballot pool?
- A: Yes and the other SDO will manage their voting procedure and submit comments
- C: Dorothy Stanley and Bernard Aboba will get a copy for the IETF, they will arrange for comments
- C: Dorothy is .11 liaison to IETF. Yoshi is the .21 Liaison
- C: Dorothy is mentioned as a courtesy.
- Q: Do we expect the IETF comments to come in Commentary Tool format?
- A: Not sure, ACTION: Chair will discuss with Bernard Aboba
Section 3 Procedure
3.1 Voting
- Vote by email
- Q: Why does the vote go to the chairs, not to the reflector?
- A: Well it needs to be sent to the chairs at least
- C: Large number of commentary files would be heavy for everyone’s mailbox
- Q: Do the votes and commentary come together, or separate?
- A: Together.
- Q: Can you change your vote before the closing of the ballot?
- A: Yes, and you can add comments through out.
- C: Only the last vote from the member wil be counted. That last vote should indicate how to treat all the comments submitted during the period
- Q: Does the 30 day period include respnding to the comments?
- A: No, the 30 days is just for submitting the comments.
- Q: Is it possible to have results of who voted what?
- A: Yes everyone’s vote and comments will eventually be posted to the website
3.2 Disapprove Votes
- Q: Can the “what must be done” could be to remove sections only.
- A: Yes
- Q: If you submit comments that are technical binding, you must vote disapprove yes?
- A: Yes. You should not submit technically binding comments if you are voting approve.
- C: If someone submits comments but votes to approve, we will convert their comments to non-binding.
- C: The Disapprove vote must come with specific comments that will convert your vote to approve.
- Q: What happens if comments arrive without “approve” or “disapprove”
- A: It’s not clear what was intended
3.3 To submit comments
- Pick Comment Type carefully
- Q: What happens if the Technical Binding comment doesn’t come with suggested remedy or if the group proposes a different remedy?
- A: It might be the suggested remedy isn’t that useful. It might be adopted or not. But the remedy helps the group to understand the disapprove more fully.
- Q: If a disapprove says “add the missing section” is that sufficient?
- A: No. The section must be provided.
4 Process
- Discussion of section 4 was a bit wide ranging, not in order of the section of the document as much...
4.1 Approval
4.1.1 Return
- Q: Return rate should be 50% instead of 75%, based on LMSC rules?
- A: 50% increases chances of ballot being successful. Members lose voting rights if they don’t vote.
- C: How about starting with 75 and see if we get it, and lower it to 50 if we don’t get the results?
- C: The membership fof the pool has to stay the same throughout the ballot
- Q: Are people who have been granted rights outside the requirement of voting?
- A: If those members don’t want to participate, there’s no point in requiring them.
- C: We need to pin down
- Q: What if group membership changes during LB?
- A: Recirculation ballots follow on and you don’t need to resubmit a vote if you approved
- C: Recirc is only allowed to vote on changes after the LB
- Q: What if a VM loses rights after LB but before a recirc?
- A: The original LB vote stands and the member can continue to vote in recircs
- Q: If a member doesn’t want to participate they can abstain?
- A: Yes
- Q: Can a member who approved later disapprove in a recirculation?
- A: Yes, disapprove on the changes only
- Q: When is recirculation vs new LB used?
- A: The WG may decide if a recirc is needed
- C: Recirc you only vote on changes made since the last ballot
- C: Sometimes voters are allowed to comment only on things they comment on initially, not allow to vote on other sections they didn’t comment on during a recirculation. This will be a faster process than if the whole document is reopened.
- C: Seems to be consensus that the comment resolution team should go through all comments, attempt to resolve them, then the revised draft is submitted for recirculation
- Q: What happens to unresolved comments between recircs?
- A: Change bars on the draft indicate what parts are open. But approval is for the whole draft not for sections. We want to enable glaring errors.
4.3 Obligation
- Abstain should be correlated with 3.1
Suggestions: Add clarification to 4.1.3 about:
- If vote is invalid it is as if it was not submitted
- 4.1.1 Commenter pool is voting members for deciding approval rate
Comment resolution begins only after the end of the ballot period
Sponsor Ballot usually requires over 90% WG approval to go on