Re: SocialWeb CG Feb 7, 2025 call -- CG Charter vote!

My thoughts are that we have been working on this charter for 4 months.

We have had the scope of managing the specs that came out of the Social 
Web Working Group - ActivityPub, IndieWeb, and other - since the CG was 
formed.

I don't think it's a good idea to change the scope of the CG.

Evan

On 2025-02-06 6:41 p.m., Emelia S. wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I think we'd actually be better served by forming a few different 
> community groups:
> - one for ActivityPub / AS2 + the related specs
> - one for IndieWeb, so things like IndieAuth, webmention, etc
> - and a third for ... I'm not sure what to call it, but like linked 
> data notifications, JF2, etc
>
> We could share all the charter documents, but I think this would give 
> each CG a much clearer focus, folks can be chairs or involved in 
> multiple CG's, so that should be fine. We can always do joint calls 
> and collaborate on documents too, I'm sure, if need be.
>
> I'm not sure we're best served by one big umbrella "Social Web CG", 
> when there's some very specific needs for each group that are 
> sometimes competing.
>
> This is currently my main concern with the charter document and it's 
> scope of work — I think we're unfocused there and it could lead to 
> situations like what originally happened with the WG, which I think 
> we'd possibly be best to avoid repeating?
>
> That also solves the "who should be a chair" problem around voting and 
> such that Melvin pointed at.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> — Emelia
>
>> On 6 Feb 2025, at 12:08, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> čt 6. 2. 2025 v 1:04 odesílatel Dmitri Zagidulin 
>> <dzagidulin@gmail.com> napsal:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     Reminder that the February SocialWeb CG group call is coming up
>>     this coming Friday, Feb 7.
>>     We hope to see you all there, as we'll be voting to adopt the
>>     Charter for our Community Group. (Which will kick off a Call for
>>     Consensus period of 2 weeks after Friday.)
>>
>>     Now's your chance to look through the proposed charter (rendered
>>     version at
>>     https://swicg.github.io/potential-charters/CGCharter-1727386911.html
>>     ), issue tracker at https://github.com/swicg/potential-charters
>>     and bring up any last minute concerns.
>>
>>     Calendar entry for the call:
>>     https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/5d831091-a1b8-4be3-bf1a-36e896a61332/20250207T130000/
>>
>>
>> I believe there is an issue with *affiliation* in the context of the 
>> social web and diversity—specifically, that it is not solely 
>> *employer-based*. People often represent a *primary protocol 
>> ecosystem* (for lack of a better term) they are actively working on.
>>
>> In the WG, we had three broad groups: *Solid, IndieWeb, and 
>> ActivityStreams*, with significant overlap among them. In an extreme 
>> scenario, you could have 20* CG members from IndieWeb*, each 
>> representing a single user, all voting for one another. This could 
>> potentially *crowd out other areas of the social web* that serve 
>> *millions of users*.
>>
>> Affiliation needs to be broader to ensure representation across 
>> different ecosystems. For instance, we could have:
>>
>>   * *One chair from ActivityPub*,
>>   * *One from IndieWeb*,
>>   * *One from the broader social web* (including W3C-linked data
>>     standards, etc.).
>>
>> Imagine someone introducing themselves on a call:
>>
>> /"Hi, my name is Joe, and I work on ActivityPub."/
>>
>> The *boilerplate charters* don’t align well with our use case, and 
>> there’s no clear way to codify this in a formal charter *without 
>> risking it being gamed*. However, we could *informally agree* on a 
>> more balanced approach:
>>
>>   * *One chair from ActivityPub/Mastodon/SocialHub (with a max of two),*
>>   * *At most one from IndieWeb,*
>>   * *At most one from the rest of the social web, including
>>     W3C-linked data standards.*
>>
>> If I recall correctly, during the *SWXG*, we had three proposed 
>> chairs, but two were perceived as *too RDF-heavy*, leading to 
>> objections. One person stepped back to ensure *better balance*.
>>
>> Ultimately, we are often more *affiliated with the protocols we work 
>> on* than with our employers (with exceptions like Bridgy). The 
>> challenge is that *this balance is difficult to codify in a charter*, 
>> but we could *informally agree* to maintain *diverse leadership* for 
>> better representation.
>>
>> Another way would be a two step process.  After elections, members 
>> reserve the right to object to the proposed chairs, if they are not 
>> diverse enough.  iirc this is what happened with the SWXG where we 
>> had two chairs that were perceived to be heavy RDF, and so one 
>> swapped out for another, which worked quite well.
>>
>>
>>     Thanks!
>>
>