RE: Seeking feedback from AB nominees on a few items

Thanks Art,

I support both ideas in principle.  I agree that AB discussions of process issues should be done in a public forum (or at least be member-visible ... I'll have to think about whether I would appreciate our personal thoughts being Tweeted/ Slashdotted as the position of our employers) unless there is some compelling reason for confidentiality.  For example, the W3C management ran various process-related ideas for addressing Mozilla's formal objection to the HTML WG charter past the current AB in advance, and asked us not to release minutes until they were ready to go public. That seems reasonable -- the case for public discussion of general process matters doesn't trump the team's need for frank and timely advice on specific situations, but that's probably an isolated case.
Likewise  I'm not sure off the top of my head that a Community Group is the right venue for that discussion; I'd be inclined to want it in a more permanent and official list, but that's just an implementation detail.  

I pretty much completely agree with the second suggestion.  Note that I made this proposal on AC Forum yesterday https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2013AprJun/0158.html , and made several posts in the AC's 2009 thread starting at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2009AprJun/0146.html generally supporting a self-selected AB and TAG. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Barstow [mailto:art.barstow@nokia.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Tantek Çelik; Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH); Don Deutsch; Yosuke Funahashi; GALINDO Virginie; Daniel Glazman; Ora Lassila; Charles McCathieNevile; Soohong Park; Roberto Scano; David Singer; Chris Wilson
Cc: public-w3process
Subject: Seeking feedback from AB nominees on a few items

Hello AB Nominees,

I am interested in your comments on two items ...

1. One of the things that is somewhat unique about AB members is they are expected to "use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user" [1]. Since this implies AB members represent "everyone" including non W3C Members, it seems somewhere between ignorant/remiss to at least a tad bit hubristic, for the AB to continue to conduct its process related discussions in a non-Public forum. To address this issue, I propose:

* All AB discussions related to W3C processes (e.g. the W3C Process
Document) are to be conducted in a Public forum (e.g. public-w3process list).

2. A few years ago [2] and again this week [3], some members of the Advisory Committee discussed a proposal to change the AB to be "self-selecting" i.e. to eliminate the voting. Unfortunately, those threads are Member-confidential so if you can't read them, I can at least highlight my comments on those threads (if you'd like me to do so).

I would appreciate if the AB nominees would please share their thoughts on these two items.

-Thanks, ArtB

[1] <http://www.w3.org/2002/ab/>
[2] <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2009AprJun/0146.html>
[3] <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2013AprJun/0158.html>

Received on Tuesday, 21 May 2013 21:51:25 UTC