Re: minutes: HTML WG Weekly 21 May 2009 [draft]

On May 25, 2009, at 12:36, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> On Mon, 25 May 2009 10:05:59 +0200, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>  
> wrote:

>> As Maciej pointed out, the Design Principles review survey showed  
>> wide support with very little dissent. (A small group of people  
>> disagreed on many counts.) It's unlikely we could please the small  
>> group of dissenters without watering down the Design Principles so  
>> that they'd be less representative of the wider support.
>
> You mean, it is unlikely that you could get a set of design  
> principles that everyone supports?

I think this WG will be unable to reach unanimity on any publication.

> * recognising that the document doesn't represent a consensus of the  
> group, but the agreement of a big chunk with what they read in it,  
> plus the agreement of almost all the rest that publishing this in  
> some form is a useful activity, and

My understanding of the Process is that a WG needs to notify the  
Director of lack of consensus (i.e. Formal Objections) but doesn't  
need to include a minority report in the publication itself.

> The logical process consequence of such a decision would be that the  
> group should publish a version indicating the document is no longer  
> an active work item.

Doing so would require a WG decision. Alternatively, the WG could let  
Maciej address low-hanging fruit-type concerns and vote to publish the  
Design Principles as a WG Note that doesn't have self-dismissive front  
matter thereby not working on it actively any further (assuming, of  
course, that the majority of the WG still supports the Design  
Principles).

P.S. quoting http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#Consensus 
  for reference:
> The following terms are used in this document to describe the level  
> of support for a decision among a set of eligible individuals:
>
> 	• Consensus: A substantial number of individuals in the set support  
> the decision and nobody in the set registers a Formal Objection.  
> Individuals in the set may abstain. Abstention is either an explicit  
> expression of no opinion or silence by an individual in the set.  
> Unanimity is the particular case of consensus where all individuals  
> in the set support the decision (i.e., no individual in the set  
> abstains).
> 	• Dissent: At least one individual in the set registers a Formal  
> Objection.

Further observation: The only FO against the Design Principles was  
made by a person who is no longer in the set of individuals who form  
this WG, so one might argue that the FO doesn't block WG consensus  
anymore even though it blocks (if unaddressed) consensus in a larger  
W3C community.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Monday, 25 May 2009 10:35:30 UTC