Re: A charter for the Social Web Working Group

Hi all,

quick reaction to the last point

On 05/09/2024 13:55, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> So, at last year's TPAC meeting, we discussed chartering a new Working 
> Group. Only a Working Group can publish new versions of a published 
> recommendation, and every recommendation is supposed to have an active 
> working group to manage it.
>
> I'd like to propose that we move forward with a charter for an ongoing 
> Social WG charter:
>
> 1. Apply errata to ActivityPub and Activity Streams 2.0 recommendations.
>
> 2. Make backwards-compatible, clarifying text for ActivityPub and 
> Activity Streams 2.0. Not new features or functionality, but clearer 
> explanations for some of the terse and/or vague language in both sets 
> of specs.
>
> 3. Refine the recent CG report for ActivityPub + Webfinger into a 
> recommendation.
>
> 4. Refine the recent CG report for ActivityPub + HTTP Signature into a 
> recommendation, including an upgrade to RFC 9421, with backwards 
> compatibility as a fallback.
>
> 5. As other new CG reports, like E2EE and LOLA, are published and 
> implemented, refine the reports into recommendations.
>
> I think this WG could work with a limited membership -- ideally just 
> the editors of each document -- and work with consensus from this CG. 
> So, no independent meetings, decisions, etc. 🤞🏼
Having joint meetings between the WG and the CG is indeed entirely 
possible. The JSON-LD WG and CG have been working like this for a while.

However, I would expect some push back from W3C members if the WG 
charter said something like "no independent decisions". This almost 
sounds like the WG would be subordinated to the CG...

That being said, if the letter is problematic, I understand (and concur 
with) the spirit of this phrase. Actually, there are more and more 
discussions among W3C members about  the importance of getting feedback 
from all stakeholders, not just WG participants. So I would suggest to

* include, in the charter, the CG in the "Coordination" section of the 
charter, explicitly stating that the WG will have regular joint meeting 
with the CG
* somewhere in the charter (intro of the "Coordination" section, or even 
in the "Success criteria"), explain that the chairs of the WG will 
strive to find consensus with all stakeholders, possibly beyond the 
participants of the WG

my 2¢

   pa

>
> Evan
>
>