On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 01:19:26PM -0700, Tony Hain wrote:
>
> Clearly the IAOC is inadequately staffed if one person missing for an
> extended period is inhibiting their activities.....
This is the part which really confuses me. Why is this such an urgent
matter?
The stated reason in the IAOC request for community feedback was
difficulty in getting a quorum:
"Given the size of the IAOC, a missing member makes it much
harder to get a quorum."
I was trying to figure out what the quorum requirements were, so I
checked out RFC 4071. There I found:
The IAOC decides the details about its decision-making rules,
including its rules for quorum, conflict of interest, and breaking of
ties. These rules shall be made public.
I am not sure these are latest rules, but [1] states:
"A quorum for a meeting of the IAOC shall be a majority of the
IAOC then in office. All decisions of the members must be
approved by majority vote of the members then in office."
[1] http://iaoc.ietf.org/docs/IAOC-Administrative-Procedures-9-16-2010.pdf
So that means the quorum requirement is 5 people --- out of the 9
IAOC members. OK, so if Marshall has been AWOL, there must be at
least four other people who are also not showing up if quorom is not
being achieved, which would seem to indicate a problem that extends
beyond just that of a single person.
The other potential problem is that the decision making process seems
to currently require a majority of the IAOC members, and not a
majority of the IAOC members who are attending a meeting. This means
that if only five IAOC members attend an IAOC meeting, all five would
have to act unaminously to make a decision.
Still, I'm curious why the absence of one person is so great that
people want to make emergency rule changes and why people are treating
this as some kind of constitutional crisis. Is there part of the
story which I am missing?
Regards,
- Ted
P.S. And if the IAOC is empowered to change its quorum and decision
making rules, is there some reason why they can't unanimously (if
there are only five people who are paying attention and attending
meetings) chose to set quorom to be say 3 or 4 people, and perhaps
only require a majority of the IAOC members in attendance?
This is something that appears could be done without having to make
any variances to existing procedure, or to make any emergency rule
changes.