Re: to recycle old and inactive CG (Community I/O) or to propose new one (Collaborative Economy)?

> On Aug 20, 2015, at 12:06 PM, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 08/20/2015 12:30 PM, Bassetti, Ann wrote:
>> Sounds very interesting, elf. Lynn Foster also explained some of this to me awhile ago -- fascinating explorations!
>> 
>> I suggest using a name that is most recognizable by the community you want to attract. And also for communicating the concept(s) publicly.  For me, with no background, "economy" sounds more explicit than I/O for what I understand you are trying to get at. I/O to me implies computer system level actions.
>> 
>> Sandro, Harry, Wendy -- from a W3C point-of-view, would elf start a new group or can he re-name his old group?
> 
> I believe the answer is 'start a new group' would be far by easiest. I
> do not know if we can re-label old groups, and I doubt we can without
> systeam work that is unlikely to happen. Elf can ask System Team
> directly by emailing sysreq@w3.org.

Some notes:

 * It is easy from an operational perspective to repurpose a CG (provided the shortname does not require changing).
   The place to send the request would be team-community-process@w3.org.

 * Whether one should repurpose a CG is another story, and I think there are many considerations such as how
   active and old the community has been, whether the mailing list includes lots of people who signed up for one
   topic and are now receiving email about another, whether the group has published Reports, etc.

 * If the group has published Reports (which this group has not), it might be more challenging (but not impossible) to
   identify who contributed to the old reports and who contributed to new reports after the “charter change.”

 * We don’t have a lot of experience in doing this, but it seems to me that if the CG is repurposed in a way that
   is a refinement of its original purpose, and if there is consensus among the participants to make the change, it
   should be fine to repurpose the group. This spares people the need to join another group. (Which is not super costly
   but doing nothing is less costly.)

In practice, repurposing a group would be done like this:

 * The CG Chair(s) should propose a new description to the CG (on their list) and entertain feedback. If there’s support,
   then make the change. Otherwise, do nothing or shut down the group.

 * Once there is consensus to make the change, the Chair sends a new description for the group to team-community-process@w3.org.
   The staff who manage CGs will update the  description that appears on the home page.

 * The CG Chair(s) would then update things like the group’s wiki or charter, marking things as historical, etc.

 * The CG Chair would ideally then blog about the change to the group, and that blog post would also appear automatically on the
   main CG page, serving as a notice to the broader community about the change.

Ian

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447