RE: [council] Comment deadlines

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

On Sat, 08 Jan 2000 23:36:20 -0500
Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> Caroline --
> 
> 	I think both views have merit.  On the one hand, the overall comment
> period was sufficiently long that I don't think anyone can complain of
> being unreasonably rushed.  On the other hand, I really don't think there
> would be any negative reaction from the WG if the deadline were delayed for
> a few hours, and there might be some negative reaction, from the supporters
> of the request, if the deadline is not extended.   (Given that -- for
> better or for worse -- a disproportionate number of comments may come in
> from the U.S. West Coast, it does seem sort of silly to have a deadline set
> at 9am Monday morning for people in that time zone.)  Further, I suspect
> that a number of comments may come from people who aren't used to dealing
> with international organizations and simply assume, without thinking, that
> the deadline is COB in their own time zone -- it seems draconian to exclude
> them for a procedural slipup.  So my leaning is to grant the request, on
> the theory that in general we should accomodate such requests when it's
> harmless to do so.
> 
> Jon
> 
==> All,

    Let me add one very practical comment.

    When we set a deadline, and sent an announcement on that,
    this announcement arrives at different local times (EOB in Europe
    is morning in the US West Coast, middle of a day in Latin America
    or US East Coast, EOB+2 in East Africa ... and middle
    of a night next day in Japan, Korea and Australia).
    The total time allowed to everybody is exactly the same all over
    the Earth, only starting/ending day/hour differs.

    Whereas it is indeed without much importance (few hours added today
    or not), setting a precedance of last minutes changes seems not
    a good practice for me. Accomodating is only apparently a good
    action. We have the biggest evidence in the WG-C comments deadline
    -- I believe it was set on Monday because in a good action
    we wanted to give people all the weekend time :-)

    Bottom line: What to do now ?

    Elisabeth