From: swinny@cix.co.uk (Rob Felton) Newsgroups: soc.culture.irish,ie.general,ie.news,ie.announce Subject: RESULTS - Terms of Reference for IE Usenet Committee PASSES 21:8 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 23:38 +0100 (BST) RESULT OF CALL FOR VOTES Summary: Terms of Reference for IE Usenet Committee Terms of Reference for IE Usenet Committee PASSES 21:8 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Voting closed at 23:59:59 BST, 18th April 1999. Proponent: alex@medianet.ie (Alex French) Votetaker: votequestion@swinny.cix.co.uk (Rob Felton) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Distribution: ie.general, soc.culture.irish, ie.news, ie.announce ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Results: The results follow below in the following order: 1) Result 2) Particulars of the Vote 3) Votetakers comments 4) Voting and Appeal guidelines 5) Rationale & Newsgroup charter PROPOSAL - Terms of Reference for IE Usenet Committee For this vote to be valid a criteria of 20 votes had to be met - 29 valid votes were received and so the vote passed this criteria. YES = 21 = 72.41% NO = 8 = 27.59% ABSTAIN = 0 = 00.00% YES beat NO by a majority of 13 votes. For this vote to be valid a criteria of 66% vote for YES had to be met - YES won with 72.41% of the vote and so the vote passed this criteria. Therefore the proposal met both criteria and so PASSES. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Particulars of the Vote YES VOTES Arthur Green ajgreen@iol##EI David Wolverson davidw@indigo##EI Joe Doyle sanjose@clubi##EI Brian O'Byrne bobyrne@iol##EI pauline mccaffrey mccaffrp@tcd##EI David Wolverson davidw@indigo##EI Stephen Hanafin stephen@kilkenny@ten Derek O'Neill elf@iol##EI Gareth Martin gar@indigo##EI Stephen Drumm sdrumm@iol##EI Robert Fahey shinji@qamex@ocm Tom Cosgrave tpc@indigo##EI Diarmuid Collins dcollins@s3two##EI Juan Flynn jjjuan=nm@maths.tcd##EI Dermot Frost dfrost@maths.tcd##EI Michael Collins michael@netsoc.tcd##EI Alex French alex@medianet##EI Matthew Sammon hibernia@clubi##EI Adam Comerford adam@netsoc.tcd##EI Gerard Cunningham abardubh@wwa@ocm helena kim helena@netsoc.tcd##EI NO VOTES Aoife Tierney aoife@binky@ten Raymond Leger ray@esat@ten Shakira Ni Cheallaigh shakira@orca.ucd##EI Conor Foley conor@dspsrv@ocm Joe Power joe@vendor##EI Dave Rynne dave@esat@ten Chris Higgins chris@esat@ten alan pearse twenty@iol##EI ------------------------------------------------------------------- Votetakers Notes: I apologise a delay in realising the results - this is due to a number of reasons within real life. There were no problems with the vote and so it passed without incident. And can I please wish the irish hierarchy good luck in the future and I hope the Committee - Good Luck!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------ This vote was conducted by a neutral third party member of UKVoting. UKVoting is a group of independent votetakers who count votes on CFVs in the uk hierarchy and for other parties including the irish hierarchy. The rules under which this vote is taken are posted regularly to uk.net.news.announce or can be found at the following URL: ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/uk/voting The UKVoting web pages can be found at http://www.ukvoting.org.uk/ There is a five day discussion period after these results are posted to the relevant newsgroups. Allegations of irregularity should be sent to ukvoting@ukvoting.org.uk. ------------------------------------------------------------- RATIONALE: ---------- The Terms of Reference below are based on the UK Usenet Committee ToR, available from http://www.usenet.org.uk. These have been modified based on suggestions by ie.* readers, Irish Usenet administrators and members of the UK Committee. The motivation in proposing this committee is to have the ie.* hierarchy overseen by a committee composed of both ie.* readers and Usenet administrators, rather than the present situation of control residing in a single ISP (Esat Net). Esat inherited this position from EUNet, which held it for historical reasons. While there is no implied criticism of Esat's stewardship of ie.*, there is increasing feeling that if the ie.* hierarchy is to grow alongside the Irish Internet community, a lot of work needs to be done. Specifically, the rules for creating a new ie.* group need to be documented and made widely available, guidance on group naming should be available and FAQ lists should be set up for existing groups. Many people seem to feel that a mixed group representing the interests of ISPs and users alike would be the best way forward. Please note that the ToR below are purposefully vague in some areas. It is intended that a committee would, as its first job, propose a more complete set of rules which could be voted on by ie.* readers. Note that at this stage people should *not* be nominated for the committee. Before this can happen we, the ie.* readers, must decide if a committee is necessary at this stage. ================================================================= PROPOSED IE USENET TERMS OF REFERENCE ------------------------------------- The remit of the IE Usenet Committee is to provide leadership in policy concerning the ie.* news hierarchy. The committee is concerned with issues such as naming, voting and management of the hierarchy. It will monitor the naming of new groups to insure they fit in with an acceptable structure. The committee has no control over individual articles in ie.* groups or on their content. The committee will not moderate groups with the exception of the group of record (see below). It will ensure that the rules for group creation are documented, followed and applied. It will ensure that a list of Frequently Asked Questions is compiled for each ie.* group by the readers of that group and it will ensure that these lists are publicly available. It will appoint, and oversee the work of, the person to act as Control. Initial Duties Once elected, the committee shall create an official ie.* group of record. This will be used to propose new groups, nominate new committee members, etc. Membership There shall be two classes of member of the Committee. 1. News Administrator Members A News Administrator is a person responsible for administering or overseeing the Usenet system on a large site. Any site with 100 or more Usenet users shall be considered "large" for the purposes of this document. The Committee shall include, as Newsadmin members, 3 such news administrators. 2. Open Members An Open Member is any person who is a reader of ie.* newsgroups. An Open member may not be a News Administrator, as defined above. The Committee shall include 3 Open Members. Term One third of each elected class of member shall retire each year (if more than one third have not already served a full 3 years, the choice shall be made by lot). Retiring members shall be eligible for re-election. Other vacancies that may arise shall be filled at the next annual election. Control The person appointed as Control must be an elected News Administrator member of the Committee. He will moderate the group of record and shall be the sole person entitled to issue valid 'newgroup', 'rmgroup' and 'checkgroups' control messages for the ie.* hierarchy. He will perform all other duties necessary for the efficient management of the ie.* hierarchy. Elections 1. Each year during January, Control shall post to the group of record a call for nominations for the News Administrators and Open classes of members. Nominations shall remain open for two weeks, and each candidate must receive 2 nominations. 2. If the number of persons nominated in any class exceeds the number of vacancies, an independent vote taker will be appointed by the Committee, and he shall be responsible for conducting a vote. Voting shall take place during February. The CFV shall be posted in the group of record. 3. Separate votes will be conducted for each class of member. Rule Changes Any changes to these rules, or those in the companion documents, shall be proposed in an RFD. RFDs for rule changes shall be discussed in the newsgroup of record for a minimum of 21 days, and this will be the definitive record of discussion. If the change is trivial, or an obvious consensus has emerged, then the RFD may be accepted without a vote. However, if a petition to have a Vote is posted in the group of record by 2 or more people, then the matter shall be decided by vote. --------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks Swinny - Rob Felton Co-Ordinator, UKVoting (mailto:ukvoting@usenet.org.uk)