[AFS3-std] chairs?

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Monday, November 15, 2010 11:09:59 AM -0700 Kim Kimball <dhk@ccre.com> 
wrote:

> I'm confused.
>
> If we have rules for ourselves, we should follow them.

We don't.  We're in a bootstrapping phase; to establish a charter we need 
chairs, while to elect chairs we need a charter, or at least some rules for 
an election.  The registrars resolved this by asking for and getting 
consensus for running the first elections under the rules contained in 
Simon's draft charter.  The entirety of anyone's authority in this process 
derives from that consensus, and from people's willingness to abide by its 
outcome, once we're done.

Unfortunately, those rules were incomplete in a number of ways, some of 
which were not discovered until the process was underway, or later.  Many 
of the potential edge cases simply did not trigger.  We didn't lack for 
nominations; no one inadvertently revealed the status of the ongoing 
eleection; we did't have all of the registrars accept nominations, leaving 
no vote-takers.  To name a few.

Unfortunately, we now have encountered an edge case the rules didn't 
anticipate.  The rules state that the election results must be announced, 
independently by each vote-taker, within 7 days of the close of voting. 
Two vote-takers did that, while the third did not (and presently cannot, 
because he doesn't have access to his machines containing the data, even 
though he is online).  The rules we're operating under don't say what 
happens in this case.

> If they're in the way, which they are, they should either be corrected or
> abandoned.

Yes; there have been some discussions about how to improve the elections 
process.  Hopefully the lessons we've learned will be applied as the group 
writes its permanent charter.

> If there's a call for "is the election legit," I'm personally fine with
> it and have been.

Yes, there is such a call, as stated in Doug's message, "Call for consensus 
on the election of the co-chairs", and my followup, both dated Nov 12.

> I'm not fine with establishing rules and then discarding them, regardless
> of whether we're an organisation, a small group, a gaggle, murder, herd,
> or flock.

We're not doing that.  That said, especially in a small group such as this, 
it is apprporiate for the group as a whole to override particular rules 
when necessary, and I hope the permanent charter will include an explicit 
provision to permit that.





To be clear...

In my message, "Call for Votes", sent on August 24, and speaking for the 
registrars/vote-takers as a group, I wrote the following:


> Because the elections process has never been used or tested before, there
> are inevitably some gaps which need to be filled.  Additionally, we feel
> the circumstances of bootstrapping call for special handling which is not
> fully spelled out in the provisional charter.  Therefore, the vote-takers
> have taken several decisions regarding the process for the present
> election _only_.  It is our hope that once the election is concluded and
> chairs are installed, the group will take what we have learned (and what
> we will learn) into consideration when formulating its initial charter.
> The decisions we've taken are as follows:

...

> - In any situation which draft-wilkinson-afs3-standardisation-00 does
>   not anticipate or address, the vote-takers will apply common sense
>   to determine an appropriate course of action.



This is such a provision, and we're invoking that bullet point now.

In response to the community, Doug has issued a consensus call on whether 
to accept the election results posted by Thomas and myself without waiting 
for David's confirmation.  Note that even if the election results are _not_ 
accepted, under the lack-of-rules we have so far, Doug has as much 
authority to do this as anyone else.

Applying common sense but also preferring to err on the side of caution, 
the vote-takers plan to wait for the timer on this call to run out, then 
make a determination as to its result and act accordingly.

-- Jeff