Re: AB size [Was: Re: Is strategic voting a problem? - was RE: Don't disclose election results]

On 6/9/14, 9:58 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Jun 2014 22:28:34 +0200, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 6/8/14 9:07 AM, Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:
>>> For the record I still don't support notably increasing its size.
>>
>> What is your definition of `notable` here? Is 12 or 18 or 24 ok?
>
> The bigger it gets, the worse the problem of a large AB gets. It's not pure
> mathematics, it's social interactions. I don't think the AB should get any bigger.
>
>>> I do support moving as much as possible of what it does to the AC at large,
>>> or community groups, and making the AB's work as transparent as possible
>>> (this allows AC reps to check that the people they trust really *are*
>>> representing them).
>>
>> What specific role/task cannot be handled by the AC and why?
>
> Whatever W3C staff do not feel comfortable sharing with the membership at large
> as the first place they consult.

This is one of the points which are difficult or impossible for me to 
understand. I don't mean I disagree with this. I just mean I have almost no data 
point to consider this topic.

During the intro session, you said the benefit of the AB's consultation for W3M 
was mostly its agility rather than topic's sensitivity, as you wrote below 
again. If it's the case, could the AB create a list of this type of consultation 
it has provided to W3M ex. during this one year please?

This data point is important on many levels, for example, if the consultation 
were the major, core, or irreplaceable role of the AB, this data point should've 
been provided to AC reps before and during the election, allowing AC reps to 
choose the right people to deal with the issues.

Yosuke

> Because instead of getting advice that the membership thinks is given by people
> who collectively represent them, staff get it from people they the staff
> themselves select by asking individuals.
>
> While they are likely to ask smart people, my experience is they are likely to
> ask a less representative subset than "people elected by the whole AC". This
> puts pressure on AC reps to do more work that they had delegated to a group they
> trust and vote for. It has also been less than successful - when they followed
> this process to deal with HTML licensing last year, a delay of months in such
> private consultation got us from one formal objection to half a dozen…
>
>>> I think it is also important that the AB make a significant commitment to be
>>> available, that AC reps at large do not and should not have to make.
>>
>> (I guess I'll have to wait for my `secret decoder ring` to arrive on July 1 to
>> try to understand why the entire Membership shouldn't be privy to info shared
>> with such a tiny subset of Members.)
>
> There is very little that is not shared with the members through the minutes.
> But in many cases W3C still doesn't seem comfortable going straight to the AC.
> Maybe they want smaller inboxes, or they want the AC to have smaller inboxes.
> Fortunately that seems to be changing, and we may see the role of the AB decline
> substantially.
>
> BUT the AC may *want* the AB to take responsibility for doing work, to reduce
> the amount of work each AC member needs to do - as Dave Singer said, the
> accepted responsibility is a valuable feature.
>
> cheers
>

-- 
Yosuke Funahashi
co-Chair, W3C Web and TV IG
Chair, W3C Web and Broadcasting BG
Researcher, Keio Research Institute at SFC
Special Adviser, Tomo-Digi Corporation

Received on Monday, 9 June 2014 19:55:12 UTC