Re: Super Majority Votes: how are we measuring this?

On 8/6/21 12:32 AM, Michael Herman (Trusted Digital Web) wrote:
> It sounds like we’re all shooting in the dark in terms of what the actual
> members of CCG want, need, and expect.

No, please stop... we're not all shooting in the dark.

Some of us have been doing this (global standards in fully public settings)
for much longer than others and have experiences that are influencing where we
take the group next. It may feel to some of the newer folks that we're
shooting in the dark, but this sort of upheaval from time to time is
completely normal, especially around work items that are less than a few years
old.

People get triggered, get on soap boxes, make speeches about their position,
and after a while... after everyone starts listening to each other, things
usually settle down to some sort of compromise... and the group moves on.

> A curious term to say the least.  How does W3C/CCG define “best consensus”
> Joe?

For official W3C Working Groups, it's defined here, in the W3C Process document:

https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#Consensus

For the CCG, it's some variation of that... as W3C Community Groups don't have
to follow official W3C Process (although, usually it's a good idea because
that's 25+ years of hard won wisdom on how to create global standards).

> 1. My thoughts exactly.  In that spirit, the "67%" is meaningless and IMO>
> shouldn't have been offered without a legitimate context.
The context was the existing W3C Process... we were failing to achieve
consensus on the questions related to GNAP and RAR and the VC HTTP API w/o
what could be considered as principled objections from Adrian and Justin:

https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2021-06-22-vchttpapi/#topic-7

The group was then notified that we'd be TEMPORARILY switching to majority
voting for the "Authorization Proposals":

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2021Jul/0067.html

It was also explicitly mentioned on the call before we went into this mode
(with no objections raised when we did). While it was stated that it was going
to be simple majority (>50%), it seems as if some were confused about this at
the time:

https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2021-07-13-vchttpapi/#40

There was a concern raised /after/ the votes came in and a suggestion to "not
do this again":

https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2021-07-13-vchttpapi/#147

... and we'll be picking that concern up during next weeks call under the
banner of the following W3C Process policy (which we are not bound to follow,
but are doing so because that process has worked well many times over the past
25+ years):

https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#WGChairReopen

Joe will have the floor, as well as anyone else, to make concrete proposals to
move us forward. At present, it looks like Joe is only objecting to one of the
resolutions made:

https://github.com/w3c-ccg/vc-http-api/pull/224/files#r682106281

One simple way we could address that is to:

* Re-open a vote on just that item due to "new
  information" and decide if it'll be consensus-based,
  majority-based, or to what degree.
* Agree that we wanted to apply 2/3rds majority
  to just that one proposal (making it not pass).

... or something else clever that folks want to propose concretely.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
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Received on Saturday, 7 August 2021 21:22:14 UTC