Re: [webpayments] What are the WPWG February 2016 face-to-face prioritized issues (#89)

@msporny  re: Transparency

* The staff and chairs have a weekly meeting on a Tuesday to discuss progress and set an agenda for the upcoming call. This is the first request I have seen to have the minutes of that call made public.
* The staff and chairs also regularly reach out to other W3C staff or independent experts for their input on the work so far.
* In doing this outreach we have not always asked for permission to share the source of this input so in the interests of protecting the relations we have with those individuals it is aggregated through the chairs and staff. 
* The chairs and staff have used these outside channels to ensure we are well informed in how we deal with topics such as JSON-LD which are being aggressively pursued by members who argue that the only reason their proposals are being opposed is ignorance of the technology.
* There has not been any official W3C Team review of the API proposals and so there is no output to share other than what has been expressed in the open discussions.
* The staff and chairs do discuss strategies we should pursue to deal with issues that we consider blockers to the group's progress. (Unfortunately these issues are often not fundamental but are creating so much noise that they are distracting the group from making progress.)
* These strategies involve a plan to gather as much information as possible on the issue and put it in front of the group and then push the group to make a decision on the way forward.
* Where the discussion is one-sided we attempt to present the other-side of the argument for the benefit of the group and to ensure that when it comes time to resolve the issue the members are well informed.
* There is a lot of discussion that happens outside the group's open channels. I am aware of at least 2 recent direct calls between yourself and other group members that a) did not include either the staff or chairs, b) were not minuted c) the group were only made aware of after the fact.
* I consider these to be useful for efficient issue resolution between the parties, not malicious back-channel discussions. I'm not sure why you consider the discussions initiated by the chairs or staff in a similar vein any different?
* The key is, **no matter how much discussion happens directly between members, the chairs or staff, nothing is ever resolved by the group without being presented and discussed openly**.
* There has only been one IE application that I am aware of being declined. The individual's application was lost for some time which was a genuine mistake that the staff have apologized for. The application was recently declined on the back of a discussion with the individual who was happy to participate via the mailing list and therefor didn't require IE status anyway.
* You suggest getting IEs from, among others, the Bitcoin community and yet you yourself have publicly accused them of not wanting to be involved. I'm not sure what more you want the chairs and staff to do here?

As such, I don't believe there is a transparency issue in this group but I think we should discuss this further at the F2F.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/issues/89#issuecomment-186804056