[fitsbits] Agenda for IAU-FWG business meeting
Arnold Rots
arots at head-cfa.cfa.harvard.edu
Tue Jun 17 12:41:52 EDT 2003
I sprinkling of comments...
- Arnold
Don Wells wrote:
> Agenda for the FITS Working Group business meeting
> at the Sydney IAU General Assembly July 2003,
> with duration of order one hour
> Don Wells (Chair)
>
> The Chair recommends that this business session make no formal
> decisions on FITS policy or procedure, except for the nomination of
> the new officers, because not all IAU-FWG members will be present.
> The Chair will appoint a recording secretary for the meeting so that
> the consensus of the meeting on the issues can be reported to the
> absent members and to the larger FITS community. Formal decisions on
> policy and procedure will be made by formal votes conducted via email
> at a later time.
Depending on how many of the 13 will be there, I'd suggest a
qualification. If something pressing comes up, we ought to be able to
take action. At the discretion of the chair matters that require
timely action may be submitted for a vote, but passing will require a
majority of the current _membership_ of the WG voting in favor.
>
> 1. Report on the state of the FITS Agreements [Wells] 5_min
>
> Proposals adopted during the past triennium and proposals pending
> will be reviewed. Philosophical exhortations to the faithful will
> be uttered one last time by the current Chair.
Our oracle :-)
>
> 2. Nomination of new officers [Wells, Grosbol] 5-10_min
>
> Patrick Wallace (UK) will be nominated to be Chair of the IAU FITS
> Working Group for the 2003-2006 triennium, succeeding Donald Wells
> (US). William Pence (US) will be nominated to succeed Ernst
> Raimond (Netherlands) as Vice-Chair. These nominations will be
> considered in the subsequent Commission 5 business meeting.
>
> Wells will propose that the IAU-FWG should specify a policy for
> regular (triennial?) changing of officers.
You might consider an informal rule where the vice-chair be nominated
for chair.
>
> 2. Proposal procedure and regional FITS Committees [Wells, Grosbol] 10_min
This will need more than 10 minutes, unless you rule by executive order.
>
> Some members of the FITS community have proposed that the regional
> FITS committees should be abolished, and that proposals should be
> submitted to the IAU-FWG directly for approval. Grosbol and Wells
> will recommend that the IAU-FWG maintain the regional groups as
> focus points and as part of the formal approval procedure (with
> veto power). It is obvious that the IAU-FWG needs to specify
> procedural rules for establishing new regional committees. Three
> changes in the rules for the life-cycle for new proposals should be
> considered:
I don't have a whole lot to add to the discussion about the abolition
of the regional committees and am a bit ambivalent about it. There is
something to be said for a two-tiered voting system. And there are
regional differences in the make-up of the astronomical population
that may be mnore adequately represented by regional committees.
And alternative approach (sorry, after starting to really think about
this, I discover that I have something to add ;-), could be along the
following lines. Stipulate that proposals be submitted to the
regional committees. Open discussion on fitsbits is to be
encouraged. When a regional committee approves a proposal, it submits
it directly to the IAU-FWG for a vote. However, before this WG takes
it up, the chair notifies the other regional committees and invites
their comments (in practice, presumably comments from individual
members, rather than the committees as a whole); the comment period
should be fixed (say, a month).
>
> * specify that a fully open Internet discussion period must occur
> before a proposal is finalized for voting, rather than confining
> initial discussion to a single regional committee; probably the
> rule should specify that initial submission of proposals will be
> to the IAU-FWG Chair rather than to a regional Chair
>
> * specify that all regional committees will vote concurrently, on
> the exact same proposal. Probably the IAU-FWG should retain the
> right to modify proposals in limited ways.
Good idea; but what happens when one (or two) regional committees
reject the proposal?
(I wrote this comment before the one above)
>
> * specify that proposals will expire, and need to be re-started, if
> any regional committees or the IAU-FWG do not report formal vote
> results on them within specified time-limit(s)
Is there to be a fixed time limit, or is it set for each proposal - in
which case: who sets it?
>
> 3. Proposed standard levels of 'conformance' [Grosbol, Hanisch] 10_min
>
> Many members of the FITS community assume that the default
> interpretation of our FITS agreements has been and still is that
> all FITS readers should implement the full standard. Others say
> that, while it is essential that we define one and only one way to
> implement each functionality, it is not wise to force all FITS
> readers to implement all functionalities. Perhaps the IAU-FWG
> should define rules such that proposed new additions to the FITS
> standard could specify at what level they should be implemented,
> e.g. level 1:mandatory, level 2: recommended, ...
But do we need an indicator in files that signals which (if any) level
2 standards are used?
If a standard is only recommended, there will need to be a mechanism
that prevents non-compliant readers from barfing on them.
>
> 4. Criteria for revision of IAU-FWG Membership [Wells, Wallace] 10_min
>
All this can get rather tricky. We can talk about this for a whole
day, or decide in 2 minutes that we can't solve it ;-)
Fixed terms? How many consecutive terms? Are they elected,
appointed? By whom? Is there a nomination process? Who keeps an eye
on proper representation (sub-fields, nationalities, langages, and
whatever else)?
A nominating committee consisting of the chairs of the regional
committees (not that I am eager...)?
> Wells will propose that the IAU-FWG should specify policies for
> the following matters:
>
> * regular (triennial?) changing of the IAU-FWG membership. In what
> ways and for what reasons may IAU-FWG membership be changed
> between IAU General Assemblies?
Death and resignation, I would imagine.
>
> * maximum size of IAU-FWG, probably 20 (currently 13)
>
> * interests to be represented (e.g. optical/x-ray/radio/..,
> ground/space/VO/.., datacenters/universities/.., international
> entities, major software packages, major observatories, FITS
> traditions, ??)
>
> * IAU-FWG members to be members of or consultants to Commission-5
>
> 5. IAU-FWG relationship to the VO standards efforts [Hanisch, Genova] TBD_min
>
> Francoise Genova <genova at cluster.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
> FG> There has been a discussion during the last IVOA meeting, about
> FG> how to oversee tha VO-driven standards in the coming years.
> FG> The proposal is to use the Virtual Observatory, Data Centers
> FG> and Networks WG. The idea is that VO is just beginning and
> FG> still in Phase A and needs more flexible procedures than the
> FG> FITS WG, at least for the moment, and that a possible merging
> FG> of the two WG will be discussed not this time, but in 2006 -
> FG> after also some evolution of the FITS WG itself. The different
> FG> groups taking care of standards should of course be informed of
> FG> each other work (e.g. by having a few common members)
> FG>
> FG> I will propose a more detailed 'charter' for the WG well before
> FG> our meeting at GA.
>
> --
> Donald C. Wells Scientist - GBT-PTCS Project dwells at nrao.edu
> http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
> National Radio Astronomy Observatory +1-434-296-0277
> 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-2475 USA
> (DCW is often in Green Bank, West Virginia, at +1-304-456-2146)
>
> _______________________________________________
> fitsbits mailing list
> fitsbits at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu
> http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnold H. Rots Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory tel: +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67 fax: +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138 arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu
USA http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the fitsbits
mailing list