Re: [wg-c] Election of co-chair

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, Jul 24, 1999 at 10:26:16AM -0400, Milton Mueller wrote:
[...]
>Yes, and it also obligates you to wait reasonable periods of time to gain that
>formal agreement, particularly when you know that a key person is on vacation.

1) I have absolutely no personal stake in whether or not Eva is included in 
the election, and I have no objection to waiting until, say, July 
29-31 to conduct the balloting.  However, that is Javier's call.

2) That being said, an individual going on vacation is, in itself,
obviously *not* a valid reason to delay an election, or indeed any
operation of the WG.  During any given time period the odds are fair 
that some "key" person or another will not be available.  That's the 
very nature of this forum.  

What you are obligated to do is establish reasonable time periods 
for the operation of the decision mechanism -- long enough to get 
good participation, short enough to permit progress to be made.  The 
announced nomination period was one week, which does seem adequate.

Bill made a nomination late in the nomination period, for someone he
apparently knew would be on vacation, without their knowledge.  Their
lack of ability to reply to the nomination doesn't seem like a valid
reason to delay, in itself. 

Note that in the IETF they essentially never hold elections for WG 
chair, and it is sometimes hard to find people willing to do the 
job.  That's because it actually is a lot of work, and the rewards 
are nebulous.

I might add that in PAB we debated the mechanics of email elections 
like this at some length.  The results are summarized in the PAB 
charter, which you can see online at

	http://songbird.com/pab/draft-charter.html

In particular, see

	http://songbird.com/pab/draft-charter.html#debate

and 

	http://songbird.com/pab/draft-charter.html#elections

Also, the voting protocol is discussed at

	http://songbird.com/pab/voting.html


-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain