Introduction

Attached to this blog, one can find the proposed scheme for rejecting authors based on unfulfilled shift dues. The notice sent to the council for comments implements what the council had already voted (three times) to do as documented.

The attached will be added as a management note at a later time. It was sent to the council on 2011/07/18 followed by a discussion and feedback leading to parameter adjustments. Beyond those adjustments, feedback were positive and supportive of the proposed implementation. The latest explicit EMail regarding the proposed scheme was on 2011/07/19 (another followed on the 21^st but bundled management team approval with this issue). Overall strong support.

It is a practical implementation now that STAR is equipped with all needed accounting tools.

Base description

The text initially in this doucment has been moved to a pre-policy document also attached.

Implementation

This includes gory details not meant for council members or policy drafting.

The current PhoneBook schema is as follows relevant fields

  `Id` smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `LastName` varchar(40) NOT NULL default '',
  `FirstName` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
   ...
  `isAuthor` char(1) NOT NULL default 'N' COMMENT 'The default is NO',
  `isShifter` char(1) NOT NULL default 'Y' COMMENT 'The default is YES.',
  `isExpert` char(1) NOT NULL default 'N' COMMENT 'Will be used to mainatin an expert list',
   ...
  `isEmeritus` varchar(1) NOT NULL default 'N' COMMENT 'Emeritus Status will make 
                     people remain member, authors but not counted as effective authors',
  `JoinDate` date NOT NULL default '1990-01-01',
  `LeaveDate` date NOT NULL default '2999-01-01',
  `LastUpdated` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  ...

In order to implement the schem described above, the PhoneBoook will need to be extended with at least two more fields as below:

• DisableDate: a date field which, if set, will act IMMEDIATLY i.e. does not allow the member t be authors in any of our tools
  • Affected tools: Shift signup, Author tools (generation of author list)
• DisableReason: a string field for leaving a self-explenatory comment such as "Author randomly selected and disabled on YYYYMMDD. Instution miss = ".(1-R)." with probability of ".A*(1-R)." to be excluded."
• The PhoneBook will need another table or another set of information - an accounting of previous years.
  I suggest a sinple table with: InstitutionId, Year, Missed i.e. raw value of (1-R), Deficit i.e. raw value for D.
• A table for saving the parameter settings T, P and M which will be applied per year (we may retune later)

Functional mechanics for activation/de-activation:

• Upon the selection of authors to be removed following the described prescription: isAuthor should be set to 0 for good measure, DisableDate should be set (default 0 allowed), DsiableReason initialized.
• To restore an author, at least two actions will be needed: DisableDate should be cleared and isAuthor restored to 1.

Deployment phase:

• Phase 1: have the basic logic in place and a simple "demo" button listing
  • The instutions and their Dues, Coverred, R, Missed (1-R), D (raw), D final as in the exmaple above
  • The list should be sorted by D (raw), the institution having R>=1 should be greyed (excluded from any top 5), the top 5 should be selected as red
  • Two extra columns should appear - the first is the current author lists and the second the authors whihc will be removed for the top 5
  • A button "proceed" should appear  - in phase 1, would do nothing (only a demo or debug mode)
     
• Phase 2: same but
  • The "Demo" button is renamed "Close shift accounting" (beteter suggestion welcomed / this is detail)
  • The first screen would be identical - The "Proceed" would
    • Apply the changes to the isAuthor, DisabledDate, DisableReason
    • Insert the current year InstitutionId, Year, Missed, Deficit accounting information.
    • Send Emails to the council list & the institution representative
    • Save the list of excluded authors for later consulting - this could be saved in the accounting table having InstitutionId, Year, Missed, Deficit in an additional text based column
  • The presence of the accounting information for a given year would not allow the calculation of the number of author to exclude to take place again (the "Proceed" button would not be activated and the table would display the previous list of exclude authors)

Status:

• As per 2011/08/10, we have a first cut implementation and expect a full phase 1 by the end of the week
• 2011/08/15, phase 1 fully functional with imported history from up to 2004 - moving to Phase 2 implementation. Draft policy herein moved to a document (attached / see below)
• 2011/08/16, new draft of the policy and letter head to the council ready - STAR executive informed and feedback included

Attachements

Most recent on top.

As per 2011/08/30, moved to a STAR note PSN0545 : Regulation for author list reduction (shift dues and misses).