Missing op agreement warning

In our last teleconference, I accepted an action item to produce a warning statement to be displayed in cases where the group has not adopted a "process guideline".  I am assuming this "process guideline" is meant to describe the "operational agreement" posted on [1].  Please find my draft below.

!WARNING! -  This group has not adopted an Operational Agreement as recommended by the W3C.  Participants are advised to proceed with caution because there are few native guarantees for <link>principled</link> behavior which would otherwise be in place for W3C-sponsered activities.   The only hard requirement is that the group stays within the bounds of the Charter.

If you are uncomfortable with this arrangement, please contact the group's chair(s) and request an Operational Agreement.  Keep in mind that only agreements explicitly contained in the posted Operational Agreement will be enforced.  Commitments made on the mailing list, for example, are non-binding.

Notes:
  * As best I could tell, the agreement language is a MAY.  In my statement above, I implied this would change to a SHOULD.
  * If a group does have an operational agreement, we should probably link to it.  But if they do not, I suggest  a warning similar to the above is displayed along-side the charter on the home page.
  * If a group publishes a document, the Operational Agreement should be linked as a sort of "signature" on the document.  If a group published a document that did not have an Operational Agreement in place at the time, that document should be stamped with a warning similar to the above. 


[1] http://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/

Received on Thursday, 6 December 2012 19:09:21 UTC