Say charter one more time

tl;dr? I suggest PROPOSAL 2.

Regarding the two charters under consideration:

If the charters focus on the maintenance of prior and ongoing work of 
this CG, then needless to say, the CG needs to reach consensus. This of 
course doesn't prevent a proposal from being independently proposed 
(most likely observing the same criteria from 
https://www.w3.org/Guide/standards-track/#criteria ).

Some PROPOSALs involving work on x and y:

PROPOSAL 1: The CG proposes one charter involving x.

PROPOSAL 2: The CG proposes one charter involving x and y.

PROPOSAL 3: The CG proposes two charters, one involving x, and the other 
involving x and y.

PROPOSAL 4: The CG proposes two charters with non-overlapping content.

I suspect that getting unanimous support for any proposal will be 
difficult, if not hypothetical. So, it may be fruitful for the group to 
approach this with considerations along the following lines. This is not 
intended to be exhaustive, and I'm sure others can come up with several 
dozen more.

* Which proposal will face the least objections? This may require 
refinements if some proposals have roughly equal support. What can most 
people live with?

* This may be a bit high-level, but it's always a worthwhile exercise: 
Let's put the tech aside for a minute. Since we can never be certain 
about the future, which proposal(s) may be most useful for individuals 
and communities in the "social web" ecosystem in the short term? How 
about society in the long term? What do we need to urgently get out 
there with the least amount of friction?

* Which of the proposals are we most confident that 1) W3C members will 
support, and 2) the WG will deliver?

* What might be the ramifications if x or y are left behind? How and 
when can the CG pursue whatever is left behind? What assurances is the 
CG willing to put in place to ensure that it actually happens?


Personal opinion:

I believe the maintenance charters are only part of the story, and 
undoubtedly, we, the (social) web community, need to go beyond that. It 
is hard to argue or show, even by just taking the specs (e.g., the 
output of the Social Web WG) at face value, that a fully interoperable 
system can be demonstrated. There are gaps in specs, knowledge, and 
implementation. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but taking any set of 
classes of products across the Social Web specs, I don't see how any two 
or more implementations can be guaranteed to interoperate end to end. 
This is not a criticism, but rather an acknowledgment that there are 
open problems (and they are hard) and exciting work still ahead.

So, I thought about all of this and had to put my personal tech 
preferences and what I generally use aside to help me think of the big 
picture and maintain my sense of fairness and balance.

Ultimately, it is about moving forward with maintenance - whether people 
want things to stay relevant, need to polish things, or reflect on 
lessons from the real world, or whatever.

I suspect that PROPOSALs 3 and 4 are relatively more expensive and 
complicated than PROPOSALs 1 and 2. And 3 and 4 may come across less 
coherent - we are talking about perceptions of Members and beyond here - 
than 1 and 2. Maintenance on PROPOSALs 1 or 2 can be carried out just 
fine without resorting to 3 or 4.

I can live with either PROPOSAL 1 or 2.

I'm not sure if PROPOSAL 1 is completely adequate or representative of 
this group, but I don't mean faulty. PROPOSAL 2 seems more closely 
aligned with the complexities of the work on social web tech, and some 
synergy across. Let's face it, all of this is still very much an attempt 
to turn the tide from the evil tech (tm) to our open standards-driven 
tech. Have we honestly scratched the surface? I don't know. But if we 
can continue to migrate more people (devs, individuals, communities), 
that's a win for everyone. Hopefully, they stick around after the first 
week :)

The WG can set up task forces to keep focus and carry out the work by 
making the best use of time and everyone's bandwidth. I would even say 
that this should be an understanding before joining the group. The group 
should think about rechartering for new deliverables or unfinished 
business to close the gaps mentioned above and aim to build more bridges 
with other work and initiatives in the standards community.

So, I suggest PROPOSAL 2.

-Sarven
https://csarven.ca/#i