Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 06/26/2006 The meeting was called to order at 7:31 by jhawk. In attendance were Voting members: xsdg aseering jhawk |tabbott arolfe yoz Associate members: |asedeno Prospectives: mathmike |tilia jdseale Guests: |linsc Treasurer's Report: Chairman's Report: [ed: policies in /afs/sipb/admin/text/policy] arolfe: We're going to re-pass the policies that we rescinded last meeting that we actually care about having. arolfe: Move to reinstate ---- I move for a standing policy to allow people to make copies of documentation. ---- tabbott: White ballot. [MPWB] arolfe: Move to reinstate ---- Move to have a standing policy to approve the creation of the hostnames for new machines. I move that we have a standing policy to accept any Hotline fees associated with new machines that we acquire without needing a motion. ---- tabbott: White ballot [MPWB] arolfe: Move to reinstate ---- The SIPB shall have an informal process for resolving interpersonal and behavioral issues among its affiliates (members, prospectives and guests). The SIPB Chair shall serve as the primary contact point for informal resolution of these types of issues, unless the Chair and the Vice Chair reach a public agreement that the Vice Chair shall fulfill this role. Any SIPB affiliate that has an interpersonal or behavioral issue that affects the SIPB is encouraged to discuss the issue with the contact person. The contact person has a wide-range of options for dealing with the issue, including, but not limited to, talking to affiliates affected by the issue, talking to third-parties, waiting for additional unsolicited input, encouraging dialogue between members, or making use of other MIT resources. If a SIPB affiliate feels that they cannot approach the main contact person due to a perceived conflict of interest, or if the affiliate still wants to pursue an informal process and feels that the main contact point has not made a reasonable attempt to deal with the issue, the affiliate should contact any SIPB officer. That officer shall proceed with informal resolution of the issue, while keeping the main contact point informed of what is happening, unless the officer feels that doing so would be inappropriate. ---- aseering: Second, move to amend to tabbott's wording jhawk: Bad idea to pass policy w/o careful review; even re-passing policy borderline, but making amendments right now not a good idea. ok? aseering: Sure jhawk: My opinion we should all vote "no". (motion fails 0-4-2) arolfe: Move to reinstate ---- SIPB-sponsored Athena account policy There are concerns which prevent the SIPB from sponsoring guest accounts for anyone who asks for them. These concerns include: * Licensing. Some software available on Athena are licensed to the MIT community, and there are therefore some legal problems with giving people who are not currently members of the MIT community access to them. * Policy. Clearly, Athena/IS believes that deactivating accounts is a necessary thing, and giving deactivated accounts back to anyone who asks might be considered a subversion of that policy. * Resources. The amount of resources available for Athena accounts is limited. Large-scale granting of guest accounts might tax both Athena's resources and the SIPB's. * Nepotism. The SIPB does not wish to become known as an organization that uses grease to make life better for its friends, while not serving the user community as a whole, as its charter intended. Furthermore, much of the functionality obtained through an Athena account is available on public-access systems that can legitimately give out accounts to anyone who asks and is willing to pay the (usually not very high) fees. Therefore, the SIPB chooses to restrict account sponsorship to two classes of people: * SIPB members. * Individuals who will use their accounts to further the goals of the SIPB (FTGOS). SIPB members are entitled to sponsored accounts if for no other reason than because "membership has its privileges." Furthermore, SIPB members are elected only when the membership feels that they will be a worthwhile addition to the SIPB and help to FTGOS. Therefore, sponsoring accounts for members is considered a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately, what is and is not "FTGOS" is currently somewhat undetermined. The mechanism for creating guest accounts currently leaves that decision to the discretion of the member sponsoring the account, although the SIPB Executive Committee (EC) may choose to override a member's decision to sponsor an account. When a SIPB member wishes to sponsor an account for a non-member, he or she (the "or she" is assumed from this point forward) should contact the EC through E-mail to the sipb-ec mailing list or through some other channel, providing the following information: 1. The full real name of the sponsoree, including middle initial. 2. The social security number, MIT ID or some other 9-digit number which may be used by the sponsoree when he registers for his account. 3. The desired username for the account. 4. The address to which E-mail should be forwarded, if it should not be left on an Athena post office. 5. The FTGOS purpose(s) for which the account will be used. 6. If possible, a date after which the account will no longer be needed. 7. Whether or not the sponsoree has ever had an Athena account revoked due to disciplinary reasons. Note that if the account being sponsored is the reactivation of a deactivated Athena account, items 1 and 2 are not necessary, and the username provided in item 3 is the username of the deactivated account. The sponsor must ask the sponsoree if they have had an Athena account revoked for disciplinary reasons and must ask the sponsoree to read the Athena Rules of Use. The sponsor should then wait at least three full business days after the message has been delivered to the EC. In that time, any SIPB member may choose to respond to the sponsorship request, asking for more details about the purpose of the account or questioning the sufficiency of the reasons given. If someone questions the account, the sponsor can argue with him, or bring it up at a meeting, or whatever. Among other things, the EC has the authority to request that the sponsor or sponsoree come to a meeting and justify the need for the account. The final decision about whether or not to grant the account is left to the EC. When/if the account has been approved, the sponsor should draft E-mail to "accounts" with the information from items 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 above, and have an EC member send the mail. If no expiration date was specified, then the date given should be registration day of the term following the term following the current term (e.g. an account sponsored in November should expire by default around the beginning of the following September). The message should be carbon-copied to the EC. Furthermore, if a home directory in the SIPB AFS cell is necessary, the message should be carbon-copied to the sipb-afsreq mailing list. When an account is about to expire, the sponsoree must ask the sponsor to responsor it, once again stating how it will be used to FTGOS, or he must find a new sponsor for the account. The Secretary of the SIPB will be responsible for keeping records of currently sponsored guest accounts, including their expiration dates, as well as for sending out notices when accounts are about to expire (if Athena doesn't start doing so). Notes: * Approval is not required from the EC before creation of an account for a SIPB member. Furthermore, such accounts need no expiration date. * Some scheme will have to be devised for incorporating current guest accounts into this system. ---- tabbott: second. white ballot [MPWB] arolfe: Move to reinstate ---- Send mail to the appropriate place (to be defined) and log to the appropriate file when a sipbn account is checked in/out. Require people to give real contact info if at all possible when receiving a sipbn account. When someone's granted a guest account, they should be told the account can be deactivated without warning for appropriate cause at the SIPB's discretion. We should tell them to read the Rules of Use. We should ask them if they've had an athena account revoked for cause in the past. ---- tabbott: second mathmike: suggest add actual place to send things arolfe: documented elsewhere tabbott: objects to white ballot (help here) jhawk: care to craft an amendment for that for next week? tabbott: uh, sure arolfe: how about "log to appropriate file" tabbott: sure arolfe: send mail to appropriate place and log to appropriate file tabbott: attempt to white ballot now jhawk: I object. [motion passes 4-1-1] jhawk: move to rename policy.d to policy yoz: think .d directory notation is useless for humans arolfe: SIPB members aren't humans. aseering: move to white ballot arolfe: object [motion passes 4-2-1] MIT Computing Report: SIPB Projects Report: tabbott: plan to have SIPB projects hack-a-thon next weekend; do people have opinion on food? mathmike: time? tabbott: 2:00 p.m.; might be helpful to have snacks and dinner jhawk: inquiry about money or preferred food? tabbott: money. jhawk: reasonable; proposal? tabbott: move to allocate $100 for SIPB projects hackathon arolfe: second aseering: white ballot [MPWB] arolfe: I collected SIPB's policies. jhawk: round of applause for Alex tabbott: scripts had brief outage on Sunday; relatedly, KVM switch attached to it doesn't switch during state of kernel panic scripts was in; waited 1 minute before switching jhawk: my understanding is that scripts-cert had a longer outage tabbott: we didn't notice it didn't come back up with scripts jhawk: problem causing failure to notice rectified? tabbott: yes Office Report: jhawk: property office tagged o-scope today. asedeno: propose that we pick up USB-{ATA,SATA} adapter; bt-300 $30 jhawk: what functionality over what we have now? asedeno: something jhawk: one-stop shopping and no enclosures involved? asedeno: yes yoz: white ballot [MPWB] int18: laptop here for months; perfect condition; good office security Office Cleaning Report: tabbott: seems that random piles of stuff reappear every week. I blame jhawk. jhawk: I have some culpability; I apologize; will deal soon tabbott: why two umbrellas on table there? jhawk: surplus of umbrellas yoz: to protect us against the floods arolfe: pile of crap on floor by recycling bin jhawk: also mine Publications Report: tabbott: don't think ocschwar has dealt with iAFS yet CokeComm Report: int18: no coke jhawk: cokecomm has been told tabbott: if people feel so inclined, can go to Verde's, buy coke, put in fridge, notify cokecomm Orientation Report: tabbott: discovered exciting problem, ASA concatenated categories "social" and "technology" into "socialtechnology"; what is SIPB? mathmike: Isn't SIPB a sports group? tabbott: according to ASA finboard, "yes" tabbott: ASA switched from using old db system in FYSM arolfe: The old db was a bunch of perl scripts and datafiles scattered across Athena tabbott: indeed tabbott: sent mail regarding clue dumps staring in September; as is usual, lots of exciting email responses; not responses of form "I will teach clue dump on X". I encourage all of you to volunteer to put together brief talk jhawk: historically, audience is SIPB prospectives and members jdseale: say you aren't good at many things but can do statistics? jhawk: If you're not embarrassed at no one showing up, more power to you. tabbott: useful to advertise at midway, so we should plan now jdseale: will do one for Stata (software package, not building) IAP Report: tabbott: IAP is sooner than you think. aseering: How soon do you think IAP is? tabbott: It doesn't matter. Other: xsdg: taking minutes sucks arolfe: wanna be secretary? Other Other: yoz: encourage you to `telnet ascii-wm.net 2006` for live AA broadcast The meeting was adjourned at 8:00. Minutes taken and submitted by xsdg.