[wfc] FITS Committees

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Arnold,

> I trust you are still aware that WFC stands for WGAS FITS Committee,
> i.e., the North American regional FITS committee.
> 
> Lucio Chiappetti sent a message around to the IAU FITS Working Group
> with some issues on which it would be good to hear the opinion of regional
> committee members.

I guess one issue is whether the discussions (about this and other topics, for that matter) should be kept separate between the IAU WG and the regional WGs.  Between fitsbits and fits-pres (and maybe other more-or-less public FITS-related mailing lists), and internal distribution among each of the five WGs, and then the various task-specific teams like time, our conversations can be quite fragmented even when discussing the same topic.

> The most basic question is whether the regional committees still fulfill a
> useful function.

I'd say yes, to provide a distinct level of review separate from the IAU.  It would be a mistake to flatten out the standards-making process too much.

> Around the time we were founded the world of FITS looked
> different: the global communication environment was dramatically different
> and three distinct FITS communities could easily be identified: North America,
> Europe, and Japan (though much smaller than the other two).
> 
> Today we live in a different world as far as electronic communication is
> concerned, communities are more defined by research interest than by
> geographic location, and, not withstanding the addition of Australia, large
> parts of the world are not represented, most notably India, China, Africa,
> and South America.

Not to mention the Vatican.

I suppose adding too many regional (at least, level 2) committees might dilute the decision-making.

> Basically, there are five options:
> - Leave things the way they are

We should indeed be suspicious of dramatic change when there is no strong argument.

> - Add more regional committees
> - Redraw the boundaries of the regional committees
> - Change the regional committees into, e.g., wavelength/frequency/energy
>   defined committees

I think it would be a mistake to recast them by wavelength or other technical discriminator.  A radio-only standard might well be quite different from an optical-only standard.  From the very beginning the goal has been interoperability between all classes of astronomical data.  If the regional committees are balkanized into different wavelength regimes every discussion would turn into us-versus-them tug of war.

We might productively either enlarge the mandate for the committees, e.g., "Southern Hemisphere" instead of Australia/New Zealand, or perhaps add one or two new ones.  Alternately, many observatories in South America are already covered by the N.A. or European WGs.  It isn't obvious whether the location of the observatory or rather of the often geographically diverse consortium members should define "region".

> - Abolish the regional committees

No.  An incremental evolution is preferable.

> Before you run off and jot down you opinions on this matter (and I would very
> much like to hear them), you may want to take into account that:
> a. there are discussions ongoing on the question whether the IAU FWG should
>     cover more file format standards than just FITS (HDF5, NDF, ...?)

Well, that's another argument for preserving the regional FITS committees - and if there are such ongoing discussions, perhaps they should be more widely visible than once a year at ADASS?

A key point is that if an IAU "Format Working Group" has diverse mandates, it will still retain the underlying responsibility for the FITS standard (which it may not for these other formats) and this should not be lost in the reshuffle.

> b. the next (and possibly last) major component of the standard, the Time WCS,
>     might conceivably come before us during this calendar year (yes, really);
>     if we were to abolish the regional committees, the completion of that standard
>     might be considered a natural breakpoint in FITS history.

The Vatican is interested in FITS because of the perceived stability of the standard decades and even centuries hence.  That stability would not be enhanced by freezing the standard, but paradoxically this would endanger its ability to adapt to future trends.  (I'm also skeptical that our generation of programmers and astroinformaticists has really reached the end of the interesting questions about astronomical data and metadata :-)

At any rate this breakpoint doesn't seem that natural to me.

> Ah, no, there is one other thing: a number of IAU FWG members are stepping
> down. If you have any comments or suggestions on IAU FWG membership, throw
> that in the mix as well.

I presume the usual issues of membership balance will continue to apply, and in particular that NOAO and NRAO, as founders, will continue to be represented.  Aside from that the IAU should seek broad representation from new projects and organizations as well as to increase regional diversity.

Rob