suggestions (voting)

[John C Klensin]

--On Tuesday, 26 November, 2002 11:39 +0100 Harald Tveit
Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> wrote:

> There are SDOs that have interesting voting procedures.
> For instance ISO, which allows the following (if I have
> understood it correctly):
> 
> - Approve (wholeheartedly)
> - Approve with comments (should be fixed but not important)
> - Disapprove with comments (and will approve if comments are
> addressed)
> - Disapprove altogether

In ISO and ISO/IEC JTC1 procedures (they are slightly different,
but not in any substantial way in this area) for voting on
documents proposed for standardization, your fourth category
does not exist.  The only negative vote permitted is one that
specifies the showstopper problems and identifies the fixes
necessary to turn the negative into a "yes" (or at least an
abstain).  The group proposing the standard must respond to
every single comment associated with a negative vote by either
accepting it or by explaining why it is not going to do so.  The
voting procedure does not permit unresolved negatives.  If a
comment associated with a negative vote is not agreed to,
agreement must generally be reached with the party voting "no"
that the explanation is satisfactory enough that they can agree
to disagree.

In principle, that specification with the negative vote could be
"the document is completely trash and should not be
standardized; the only fix is to throw it away and start over".
When that occurs (it does not occur very often), the response of
the submitting working group and subcommittee is typically quite
similar to that of IETF: protests that the work item was
approved and it is far too late to raise an objection of that
type.

      john