Geoff -
Whether the cases I cited break out of the "conditions" still hinges
on interpretation of the one vs many recircs interpretation of the
existing P&P wording - the history isn't there in the P&P, so while it
may be interesting and may help in informing our discussion of how we
might choose to change the P&P in the future, it doesn't help us with
interpreting the words now; they say what they say, and each
individual reading them can and will interpret them as best they can.
Interpreting the words as they stand, if you take the view (as Mat
does) that the extisting wording limits the number of recircs to one,
then your case 2 breaks the "conditions". If you take the view that
your case 2 doesn't break the conditions (as you appear to), then you
are arguing that the number of recircs permitted under the existing
wording is more than one, and your claim that any case that requires
more than 2 is disallowed is arbitrary.
However, regardless of the above, and regardless of the history
lesson, I believe what Bruce presented to us for approval on Friday
was appropriate and should be supported under our P&P. I believe the
fix to the one vs many recircs debate is to re-word the P&P so that
the shchedule is required to state (as Bruce's did) explicitly how
many recircs the WG expects to need, and if that number of recircs
(rather than a fixed max stated in the P&P) is exceeded then that
breaks the conditions (and to deal with the anal retentives, it should
be made clear that less than that number is always acceptable as long
as N is non-zero). With the requirement for a recirc to last a minimum
of 15 days, and taking account of the time inevitably needed to
resolve comments and generate new drafts, there is a natural limit
(about 6) to the number of recircs that is possible between any pair
of consecutive plenaries, but I'm sure that the WG Chairs would figure
out real soon that requesting approval of a schedule that involved an
excessive number of recircs was not a good recipe for getting their
motion approved.
Regards,
Tony
On 19 July 2010 16:33, Geoff Thompson <thompson@ieee.org
<mailto:thompson@ieee.org>> wrote:
Tony-
On 18/7/10 11:50 PM, Tony Jeffree wrote:
Your case 2, while ideally giving rise to only 2 further
recirculations, in reality can give rise to more. Every time
changes are made to the document, you open the possibility of the
editor screwing up or the voting population disagreeing with the
chosen change. Even your case 1 is not guaranteed to be a single
recirc case; every time a document is recirculated without
change, there is an opportunity for the voting population and the
WG to spot bugs in what had been agreed up to that point, and for
the WG to decide that it is a smart move to fix them before
closing the balloting process. So in reality, both of your
apparently simple cases have the potential to result in more
recirculations than you claim for them.
There is provision for each of the cases that you cite.
Specifically, the conditional approval has been broken in that the
"conditions" have not been met. That means that the package has
to be reapproved by the EC. That is all perfectly appropriate and
the way the system is supposed to work.
Geoff