JSR348-93: Comments on the Standing Rules from Anish Karmarkar

[apastsya]

Jira issue originally created by user pcurran:

Lines 20-21

Anish points out that it's unclear whether the 14 day limit for publishing minutes is for the approved minutes or for the preliminary draft minutes.

Good point. Two weeks is a bit tight to draw up the minutes, publish them, and get them approved. We could say they must be published and approved within three weeks. (That would still be a bit tight.)

Lines 29-31

We need to deal with the case where a JSR ballot is in progress when someone loses their voting privileges. Saying "loss of future JSR ballot and EC voting privileges" fixes this, I think. We should also clarify that once a member loses their voting privileges they cannot make motions or second.

Lines 62-63

Anish says "I don't understand lines 70-71. What is it that it is trying to say? Is it saying that JSR ballot votes/comments are to be made public before the vote closes?"

I don't understand this either. Given our new transparency requirements I think we could just delete this fuzzy statement.

Appendix B

Anish suggests referencing lines 110-111, to clarify how the majorities are calculated. Now that I think about it, we don't have a similar definition for a 2/3 majority. We might want to simplify 110-111 by simply stating that only votes cast are counted and by not defining the math used to calculate a majority.(Do we really need to define "simple majority?"

Lines `105-106 "Electronic ballot periods last 7 days except where noted otherwise in this document." Line 128 "The duration of the ballot is 14 days"

Strictly speaking, no contradiction since we say "unless where noted otherwise" but nevertheless a bug. I think we should stick to 14 days (our current practice.)

Also, note that we need a space before "Electronic ballot periods"

Finally, note that the use of the term "electronic ballot" here is the kind of thing I was talking about in issue [http://java.net/jira/browse/JSR348-57] This really should be "electronic vote."

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

We don't have specific suggestions for all of the issues Anish raises, but I think they're simple enough. Would you please take a stab at this and then we can review?

Thanks...

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

Regarding lines 20-21, since the text itself makes it clear that there are draft minutes to be approved at the next meeting, it would not make sense to say they must be published 3 weeks after they are taken, nor does it make sense to force the publication of preliminary minutes, so I've taken the middle road and said they must be published no later than two weeks after being approved.

Regarding "Lines 62-63 -- Anish says "I don't understand lines 70-71": this is confusing, which lines are not understood? As far as I can seen, neither 62-63 nor 70-71 talk about votes, so I don't understand what's not understood, nor what I'm supposed to delete.

Regarding voting, I have replaced lines 110-111 with: For the purpose of calculating the voting result, only the votes cast are taken into account. Thus, in the case of a vote to be decided by simple majority, if there are 15 voting members and 5 vote "yes", 4 vote "no" and 6 vote "abstain", the "no"s have it, because only 5 out of the 15 votes cast indicated "yes"; however, if 5 vote "yes", 4 vote "no" and 6 do not vote at all, the "yes"s have it, because 5 out of 9 voted "yes".

Regarding the issue of "vote" vs. "ballot" I've tried to harmonize the "Electronic Voting" section by eliminating the word "ballot" completely from it.

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

Re:

Regarding "Lines 62-63 – Anish says "I don't understand lines 70-71": this is confusing, which lines are not understood? As far as I can seen, neither 62-63 nor 70-71 talk about votes, so I don't understand what's not understood, nor what I'm supposed to delete.

Anish reviewed an earlier draft. For convenience (I thought) I figured out what the line-numbers would be in the PR draft. So, he's really talking about 62-63, which say:

"The Executive Committee shall review JSRs in a manner that provides all persons affected by a proposed Specification to have an opportunity to participate in the process."

Apart from being gramatically incorrect ("that provides ... to have") it really doesn't make a lot of sense. How can "all persons affected by a proposed Specification" participate in the process of EC reviews?

Participation is enabled by the various processes we've put in place, not by how EC members review things. So - I suggeste deleting these two lines.

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

Re:

Regarding voting, I have replaced lines 110-111 with: For the purpose of calculating the voting result, only the votes cast are taken into account. Thus, in the case of a vote to be decided by simple majority, if there are 15 voting members and 5 vote "yes", 4 vote "no" and 6 vote "abstain", the "no"s have it, because only 5 out of the 15 votes cast indicated "yes"; however, if 5 vote "yes", 4 vote "no" and 6 do not vote at all, the "yes"s have it, because 5 out of 9 voted "yes".

I still don't think we don't need provide examples. I stand by my original suggestion that "We might want to simplify 110-111 by simply stating that only votes cast are counted and by not defining the math used to calculate a majority."

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

The last comment clarified all, and it's now all resolved and fixed

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

I closed it too quickly, and there was a "last comment" I hadn't seen yet.

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

I have (reluctantly) deleted the explanation of the effect that casting abstention votes can have on calculating the results. This is the most misunderstood issue in voting in all contexts, and you're guaranteed to get protests and escalations if you declare that one side carries the vote even if it has less votes than the other side.

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

So - let's reopen this (but mark it resolved) so we can canvas other opinions...

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

Resolved, but not reviewed

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

Closed, as agreed at the September 21 Working Group meeting.

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

I'd prefer it if we reverted to the original position: the only votes that count are "yes" and "no." This means that the arithmetic is easy (no weird corner-cases where the no's have it even though the yes's have more votes, because there are abstentions.)

I'm OK with "abstain" meaning that "I deliberately chose not to vote" and "not voted" meaning "I don't know whether it's Tuesday or breakfast-time," but otherwise there being no difference between these actions.

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

the way to resolve this will be to change line 113 from "For the purpose of calculating the voting result, only the votes cast are taken into account." to "For the purpose of calculating the voting result, only the "yes" and "no" votes are taken into account."

[apastsya]

Comment created by pcurran:

Change agreed at September 29 WG meeting.

[apastsya]

Comment created by eduardo:

Reopening in order to change "Incomplete" to "Fixed"

[apastsya]

Issue was closed with resolution "Fixed"