FWD: Changes to the ballot system.

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Meant to cc the iesg on this as an FYI.

Thomas
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From: Thomas Narten <narten@rotala.raleigh.ibm.com>
To: Michael Lee <mlee@foretec.com>
CC: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 12:29:04 -0400
Subject: Changes to the ballot system.

Michael,

Here are the set of recommendations from the design team. As always,
ask if something is confusing.

0) Do not cause button clicks to open a new window. All browsers allow
   the user to request such behavior if they like it, so don't force
   it on us. This is a general statement and applies to ID Tracker as
   a whole.  [I've personally disabled this in mozilla, so I'm not
   sure which buttons have this problem.]

   Likewise, no need for a "close" button. Modern browsers have ways
   user can close windows they no longer want.

1) AD comments. There are two kinds: the "discuss" and "comments" (aka
   nits). The new balloting system keeps those comments separate
   internally to ID Tracker. That is fine.

   But, when they are displayed (or when an AD edits them), they
   should be treated as unit. I.e., display both of those comments for
   an AD one after the other (rather than in separate sections of the
   ballot). Also, when an AD edits their comments, have both be
   displayed at the same time with it easy to edit both together. Its
   OK to have different editing "subwindows" for the two kinds of
   comments, but they should be displayed on the same page, so one
   sees both as one is editing either. The "add/edit comments" button
   could be used to edit both comments. It would probably be best to
   have  only one update button, that updates both types of comments
   (figure out which if either have changed).

   The "active" buttons can be removed. The "Comments" field is made
   to disappear by having it edited to remove the text.  For "Discuss"
   comments, they are displayed only if the corresponding vote is
   still a discuss. By clearing a discuss, the Discuss comments no
   longer need to be displayed.

   The "view details" button doesn't seem to have any purpose (that I
   could figure out). Get rid of it? All of the ADs comments should be
   displayed, so one shouldn't need to click a button to see more.

2) All AD comments need to go into the general log (where we can go
   back later and look at them). An AD can update their comments at
   any time. When comments are edited and the "submit" button is
   pressed (maybe change button name to "save"), they replace the
   comments that appear on the ballot page (and get logged).

3) It's not immediately clear how one records a defer. Note also, that
   defers automatically get cleared after two weeks (change to a blank
   vote), and can only be invoked for the first telechat the document.
   Appears on.

   What we need: a button that allows us to record a defer. The fact
   that an AD has recorded a defer can appear in the ballot, e.g, as
   the test page I am looking at does:
   
   This ballot has been defered by Narten, Thomas on 2003-02-06

   but the message needs to be removed once the defer has expired.
   
   Also, all ballots that have unrecorded votes (or defers), should
   always go back onto the next agenda to get those votes
   recorded. (but in a section of the agenda clearly labeled with
   something like "Unrecorded votes to fill in".

   [note: Harald says we were shown a way to do something like this in
   SF, but I couldn't recreate this here, so maybe this is already
   done.]

5) All documents should have a ballot (including non-standards
   track). But, for non-standards track (or BCP) documents, the
   details of the ballot are a bit different.  An AD can record a
   "discuss" and add other comments to, but a document is approved so
   long as there are no Discuss comments. (In contrast, a regular
   ballot needs a quorum of yes/no ob votes). Thus all discusses must
   be resolved before approval.

   But, my sense is that the underlying logic is largely  the same as
   with regular ballots. Just the display is a bit different.

minor comments:
   
1) There should be separate columns for all votes.   I.e., separate
   column for Recuse.

2) in the discuss  column, spell out "cleared" rather than using "c" 

Misc, non-ballot unrelated issues:

1) Make the default be "public" for comments that one enters. Right
   now, one has to remember to enable public when making comments. [I
   think you just did this.]

2) One user reports: Quite often, when I use the browser's back
   button, in both Mozilla and Camino, it notes that the page was a
   POST result that had expired from the cache, and do I want to do
   the POST again?  This is at best annoying and confusing, and at
   worst can cause the wrong thing to happen.  The pages should have
   longer expirations.  [This is a general tracker issue, not just a
   ballot system issue; I added draft-ietf-idr-bgp to the tracker
   twice and it didn't stick either time; Alex finally added it a few
   weeks later but it doesn't look particularly good]

3) the "on agenda" button has caused much confusion. The problem is
   that one needs to indicate which agenda the item should go on. The
   upcoming agenda, or the one after that? Change so that it creates a
   menu of dates one can select the desired agenda from. Then, of
   course, have item does appear on the right agenda!

Thomas
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