Re: w3process-ACTION-47: Produce a proposal for addressing wayne's "comment 9" - allowing appeal where the director's decision isn't the same as the proposal sent for review.

I think there is a misunderstanding of what I was asking for.  I'm not 
asking for something new.  I think the current wording doesn't express 
what I would think everyone thinks the policy is. Before addressing 
that, I want to bring up the other part of this that is simpler.

The new policy to be able to relicense abandoned, unfinished specs that 
was approved by the AC and Director and that has a new AC appeal of the 
Director's decision on that in it.  That just needs to be added to the 
list in the Process of the things that can be appealed  That is just 
reflecting what we did already in the Process document.

Back to this other wording change.

Background.   I think there is some confusion about AC Appeals are.  It 
is more like an override than an appeal. "An Advisory Committee 
representative initiates an appeal by sending a request to the Team 
(explained in detail in the New Member Orientation 
<http://www.w3.org/Member/Intro>). The Team MUST announce the appeal 
process to the Advisory Committee and provide an address for comments 
from Advisory Committee representatives. The archive of these comments 
MUST be Member-visible. If, within one week of the Team's announcement, 
5% or more of the Advisory Committee support the appeal request, the 
Team MUST organize an appeal vote asking the Advisory Committee to 
approve or reject the decision. " 
http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#ACAppeal

Example 1:  AC Review on publishing a Recommendation.  400 AC reps 
approve publishing.  0 formal objections.  The Director rejects 
publication.  The AC cannot appeal even though support of the AC was 
unanimous.

Example 2:  AC Review on publishing a Recommendation.  399 AC reps 
approve publishing.  1 formal objections.  The Director rejects 
publication.  The AC can appeal because 1 AC rep agreed with the 
Director to reject publication.  If no AC member had agreed, it is 
example 1 and the AC cannot appeal.

I'd think no one intends for that to be the case.  It's an error due to 
wording.  What the wording is trying to say is that the AC cannot appeal 
in the following case:
Example 2:  AC Review on publishing a Recommendation.  400 AC reps 
approve publishing.  0 formal objections.  The Director approves 
publication.  The AC cannot appeal.  No AC member can ask to override if 
there were no formal objections in the AC review. That's good, but they 
worded it so it also bans appeal if the Director rejects publishing when 
no one objects to publishing!



On 2015-03-18 10:28, chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:
> 18.03.2015, 18:23, "Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH)" <Michael.Champion@microsoft.com>:
>> It's not worth our time to pursue a fix to a hypothetical corner case unless the fix is quick and obvious.  It's clear from the call yesterday and this continuing thread that there is no easy consensus on this topic, so let's close it.
>>
>> If this scenario ever comes up, it's a symptom of far worse problems than some vague wording in the process document, and clarity in the process document will do little to solve those problems.
> For what it is worth, while it is clear there isn't an easy consensus on whether the fix is worth making, there seems to be very little complicated about the fix itself.
>
> cheers
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: chaals@yandex-team.ru [mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru]
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2015 9:19 AM
>> To: David Singer; Jeff Jaffe; Revising W3C Process Community Group
>> Cc: Wayne Carr
>> Subject: Re: w3process-ACTION-47: Produce a proposal for addressing wayne's "comment 9" - allowing appeal where the director's decision isn't the same as the proposal sent for review.
>>
>> 18.03.2015, 17:11, "David Singer" <singer@apple.com>:
>>>>    On Mar 17, 2015, at 17:20 , Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>    On 3/17/2015 6:36 PM, chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:
>>>>>    + wayne.carr@
>>>>>    - sysbot+tracker@
>>>>>
>>>>>    I propose changing the second sentence of section 8.2 from
>>>>>    "When Advisory Committee review immediately precedes a decision, Advisory Committee representatives may only appeal when there is dissent."
>>>>>
>>>>>    to
>>>>>    "When there is dissent in an Advisory Committee review, or the director reaches a decision other than that proposed (including simply not doing what was proposed), Advisory Committee representatives may appeal the decision."
>>>>    I think I understand the theory by which some would like to have more of the Director's decisions available for appeal.
>>>>
>>>>    But before I (or someone else) takes this proposal to the Director, it would be useful to provide some actual use cases.
>>>>
>>>>    For example, if a WG proposed a transition and it was rejected by the Director, and the WG felt so wronged that they wanted to appeal this rejection, that would be a sample use case.  Can someone give several examples where that happened in the last five years?
>>>   That would be useful.
>> Actually, if this were a common enough problem to make that feasible, I would suggest that we would already have very serious problems.
>>>   Also (though I know the process is vague about this in most cases) — appeal to whom?  The scenario envisaged is that the WG and AC were of a like mind and recommended course A, and the Director decided on course B, correct?
>>>
>>>   Presumably the Director was well aware of the WG and AC opinion and decided B anyway.  Would it not be rather superfluous for someone to say “we think you are wrong”, and appeal (presumably to the Director), when he made the decision knowing full well that the WG and AC disagree?
>> The director is unlikely (IMHO) to have a good standard for measuring the degree if disagreement across W3C as a whole. We hope this provision isn't exercised, but it provides a way for the message to be put by the AC that the director seriously misjudged, and should think hard about the decision again. Which is why an appeal process to the person who made the decision being appealed is actually a useful thing.
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> --
>> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
> chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
>
>