Plan to resolve ISSUE-76 RDFa / Microdata

The Chairs have discussed how to move forward on ISSUE-76 and  
Microdata. We have received a Change Proposal to move Microdata out of  
the main spec, and a Counter-Proposal to keep it in the spec, both  
including reasonable arguments. We have also seen that there is  
clearly not unanimity or even rough consensus on which path is  
preferable. Therefore, per the W3C Process, we must seek the decision  
that will create the weakest objections[1].

In order to enable this, we will use the following process:

1) The Change Proposal authors have until Thursday's telecon to update  
and revise their Change Propoals as they see fit.

2) Starting Thursday immediately after the telecon and running for the  
following week, we will hold a straw poll to determine what objections  
would be raised to adopting either proposal. Some details of this  
straw poll:

     - We will not do any numerical counting all the votes. All we  
will look at is the objections and rationale presented.
     - The poll will be via the Web-based polling mechanism. There  
will be two comment boxes to register objections, if any, to either  
Change Proposal.
     - Any poll response that does not state an objection to either  
proposal will be ignored.
     - It is not sufficient to just cite a Change Proposal or someone  
else's comment; you have to actually state an objection. Though it is  
ok to quote text from somewhere else if it adequately reflects your  
thoughts.
     - To the extent we apply any numerical analysis to the results,  
we would weight the sum of all responses from a given organization at  
the weight of one vote; however our intent is to primarily look at the  
strength of objections, not their count.

3) At the end of the above process, the Chairs will read over the  
Change Proposals and all submitted objections with an open mind, to  
determine which option would result in the weakest objections. We will  
primarily evaluate the strength of the objections, not the count on  
each side, as per W3C Process. Then we will declare that Change  
Proposal that draws weaker objections to be a Decision of the Working  
Group.

4) Anyone who afterwards wishes to raise a Formal Objection to the  
decision of the Working Group will be free to do so.

Regards,
Maciej


[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#managing-dissent

Received on Tuesday, 8 December 2009 23:03:13 UTC