Re: Re-visiting how to charter WGs

On 08/19/2015 05:33 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
> Currently, charters for new WGs are semi-shrouded in mystery. While the
> AC is notified when chartering begins, there is no way for the community
> itself to ask for a WG to be chartered without going through the W3C Staff.

In practice, anyone can share a draft charter or ideas for a charter
with team and, if they ask an AC rep, with the Advisory Committee. I'd
also welcome better ways for us to recognize whether these ideas,
wherever they originate, are ripe for chartering standards-track work. I
have to raise questions with some of your implications here, however.

> 
> While sometimes this may be a good thing as the W3C staff successfully
> charters WG in the best interest of the Web, but in some domains the W3C
> staff is unqualified in terms of the modern Web (such as is often the
> case in security, such as the demand for the Credentials CG to be a WG
> [1]) or may have some other motivational structure for starting a new
> WG:  For example, the current process allows W3C staff to run
> 'skunkworks' research projects as Working Groups and for WGs that
> industry and users are not interested in (or even against) to be
> chartered, but a small persistent group of hobbyists (that may include
> W3C staff) are pushing for.
> 
> Currently we have set a higher-bar at AC voting - but would a new
> transparent process help?
> 
> I'm not sure of the details, but it seems with the amount of activity in
> CGs would provide empirical data, and there should be some objective
> threshold involving commitment in terms of implementation and real users.
> 
> I would like to see this issue taken up by the CG and AB.
> 
> This ask by the Credentials CG to be a WG in this blog post [1] and
> their analysis [2] is a pretty good test-case. 

These posts were shared with us in draft form, and are not yet public if
you don't have the direct link.

In the case of the Credentials CG and related work, I believe we *are*
doing a data-driven analysis, investigating the needs asserted and the
existing technologies available, to ask where, if anywhere, the Web
needs new standards.

Thanks,
--Wendy

Without the W3C hat on, I
> see a good case for standardizing vocabularies around health care or
> education. I don't see much of a case here [3] for replicating the work
> of OAuth, JOSE, FIDO, and then layering a somewhat incorrect mental
> model of GPG with multi-origin key material (obviously a security and
> privacy concern) on the top of the Web just because it uses RDF.
> 
>           yours,
>                 harry
> 
[not yet public]
> [3] http://opencreds.org/specs/source/identity-credentials/
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.715.4883 (office)
Policy Counsel and Domain Lead, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
http://wendy.seltzer.org/        +1.617.863.0613 (mobile)

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 2015 21:59:32 UTC