[wfc] Fwd: [Iaufec] disbandment of the Regional Committees, THIRD step

[Arnold Rots]

Dear friends at the WFC - the Regional North-American FITS Committee,

I am forwarding a recent message from Lucio Chiappetti, the chair of the
IAU FITS Working Group, who is inching closer to move our committee
into obsolescence.
He has posted a revision of the voting rules for the IAU FWG and will
announce that on FITSBITS, but I thought you should have some
forewarning on this.
He sent one more message on the subject which I will also forward.

Cheers,

  - Arnold

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 cfa.harvard.edu
USA
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lucio Chiappetti <lucio at lambrate.inaf.it>
Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 8:46 AM
Subject: [Iaufec] disbandment of the Regional Committees, THIRD step
To: IAU-FITS Executive Committee <iaufec at nrao.edu>


Dear members of the IAU FWG Executive,
                                        with some delay I am proceeding to
the next step of the procedure to change the IAU FITS WG voting rules,
i.e. preparing the final draft for submission to FITSBITS.

First of all I would like to know how many of the IAUFEC members are
affected by the US Government shutdown. I would appreciate an explicit
acknowledgment via private e-mail by Bob, Bill and Arnold that they can
receive this message via the exploder, and interact.

  - if any one of them does not reply, the deadline to pass to the next
    step will be extended until they come back on line

  - conversely if everybody replies before the deadline of end October
    and we can freeze a draft earlier, we could submit it to fitsbits
    as soon as it is ready

I have prepared a new draft taking into account the comments received so
far by the IAUFWG. The revised version (with links to the older ONES) is
at the usual place
http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Proposal/newrules.html

Please note what follows:

  - the buttons to hide "deleted text" now hides also "comments", so one
    can have an idea of what the final text will look like

  - I received several comments agains the "co-optation" of members of the
    EC, and some general comments about membership of the IAUFWG, terms of
    service etc.

    I believe we should proceed quickly to the definition of new voting
    rules ("without regional committees") and apply them ASAP to vote the
    Timing WCS proposal.

    Therefore I strongly suggest that we confine now to this
    relatively simple voting rule change, and DEFER any matter about
    composition of the EC, nomination of FWG members, and more complex
    "weighted" voting rules to LATER DISCUSSION

    This is indicated by the text hilighted in red on the page

    Also (as a comment states) the introductory sentence is not to be
    taken as part of the voting rules, but merely describes the current
    composition of the EC.

  - I would however encourage Preben Grosbol to present a formal proposal
    for various "member categories" (points 5/6/7 of his Sep 23 message)
    and eventual "weighted" voting rules.

  - I would like to stress to Don Wells that I fully appreciate the sense
    of the 6-month rule to instigate unanimous consensus. On the other
    hand many people may have the impression that we are very slow to
    decide on anything (possibly because we are busy otherwise) ...
    that's why I suggested going from 6 to 3 (somebody even advocated
    2) months for "re-thinking" ... we could as well decrease the voting
    period from 3 weeks to 2 (but I guess not shorter than that because of
    conferences, observing campaigns, holidays ... or events like the
    shutdown)

  - concerning mailing lists, after the poll I conducted I drew a
    compromise among the various suggestions and will act ASAP autonomously
    as described at the end of the web page. So it is possible that persons
    who were on the mailing lists just ex officio without being currently
    members will receive this as the last message.

Please read the page
http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Proposal/newrules.html
as soon as you can, and give me (public replies on this mailing list)
suggestions about things to change (including comments to be "disclosed"
or removed) etc.

Lucio
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