[Mpi-forum] MPI Forum voting rules: new version

[Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)]

On Jan 21, 2013, at 4:02 PM, William Gropp <wgropp at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Thanks for doing this. I have two comments:
> 
> 1) There is no definition of what it means to "read" a proposal.  

That's correct.  This proposal is about voting.  It is not about other MPI Forum procedures.

> It should be made clear that a "reading" is a summary/discussion; it is not a line-by-line discussion of the text in plenary session (those have never been productive).  

Actually, sometimes they have.  This is one of those "sometimes they've been excruciatingly painful / not useful, but other times they've been genuinely useful" situations that I don't know how/were to draw the line.  I'm not sure it would be a good idea to try to do so in a procedures document, other than the suggestions in chapter 3.

Could you suggest a bullet or two about this issue for the suggestions chapter?

> 2) The requirement for each reading and vote at a distinct physical meeting makes more sense when meetings are frequent.  This requirement should be tied to the meeting frequency in some way.  

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Are you saying that if we have distinct Forum meetings in 2 sequential weeks, it's still ok to have a reading the first meeting/week, and a vote at the second meeting/week?

...or is your concern that we'll drop down to having one meeting a year, and that would be problematic (i.e., no proposal could get done in less than 3 years)?

I don't really want to try to address the whole virtual meeting topic in this document.  This document is really just supposed to be about voting.  Other procedures can be written up in other documents, and this document can be modified to match (e.g., if some definition for a virtual meeting is ever agreed upon).

Today, we have "frequent enough" meetings, I think, such that this proposal could cover us for the next year or two.

> I'm also concerned that the rules are attempting to use legislation to solve a deeper problem, having to do with the process by which we consider proposals.  Such an approach rarely works unless the underlying problem is fixed.  I do think that the suggestions for voters (chapter 3) is starting to get at this; it also needs a suggestions for proposers and for the committee.

Good point.  

Brian and I can probably come up with suggestions for proposers that would compliment what is in the suggestions for voters.

What suggestions would you suggest for "the committee"?  Do you want write access to the bitbucket where the latex is located?

-- 
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres at cisco.com
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