RE: Proposed wording comment 9 appeal -> Re: dropping the request -> 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.

Top-posting to summarize where I think we are on Wayne Carr’s Comment 9

Two changes were proposed:

1.      Allow appeals when the Director denies a proposal (various wordings to make this possible have been proposed).

2.      Add an recently added item, relicensing a document, to the appeal list.
[I could find no text for relicensing a document in either Process 2014 or in the current draft of Process 2015, what am I missing?]

Two points of view have been expressed:

1.      These are simple changes so they should be incorporated in Process 2015

2.      We should not waste time, for Process 2015, with things that (a) seem not to have been problems in the past, (b) may not be so simple to fix, and (c) would require another round of review to insure that they are done correctly.

As far as I, as the Chair of the Process Document Task Force, can see, there is, as yet, no consensus on either of those two positions. Without consensus, the Null Position, that we should do nothing (for Process 2015) would seem the right way to go.

As noted by David Singer, there are a number of possible issues with Appeals as they are currently documented and we should treat them systematically (in Process 2016 or beyond).  So doing nothing now does not mean not doing anything at all.

It seems to me there are other problems similar to the ones that Wayne raised. For example, section 8.2 says that decisions to create, modify or extend a Working Group can only be appealed if there is “dissent”, but there is no such clause in sections 6.2.4 and 6.2.5 where these appeals are defined. Actually, Working Group extension is in both the list requiring dissent and in the list that is always appealable. Why is fixing one such mistake better than fixing all? Is it not better to do a careful re-examination of Appeals in all there instances?

See one additional inline comment below

Steve Zilles
From: chaals@yandex-team.ru [mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru]
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2015 6:17 AM
To: Wayne Carr; Olle Olsson; public-w3process@w3.org
Subject: Re: Proposed wording comment 9 appeal -> Re: dropping the request -> 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.



20.03.2015, 23:44, "Wayne Carr" <wayne.carr@linux.intel.com<mailto:wayne.carr@linux.intel.com>>:
I think we have more agreement that there is a problem.

Indeed.

  Is there any disagreement with the following language to fix it?

Works for me. I'd also support, even more strongly, "appeal decisions, unless there was no dissent and the Director's Decision is to approve the proposal unchanged, for the following:"
[SZ] I would note that there is currently (in Process 2014) one case where an appeal when the Director denies a proposal is specifically disallowed. This is in section 5.2 Advisory Committee Review of an Activity Proposal whose final paragraph says, “Note: There is no appeal of a decision not to create an Activity; in general, drafting a new Activity Proposal will be simpler than following the appeal process.” (Yes this is a Note and we are removing Activities, but the point is that there may be cases, such as this one, where fixing the problem and trying again is a better solution than appealing the decision.)

I note David's concern that we should go through the document finding the rest of the decisions that could be appealed and make sure it makes sense, but I think that is a separable task.

cheers


(also adds the relicensing appeal which was previously approved as a new appeal and just needs to be added to the list)

CURRENT TEXT
[[
When Advisory Committee review immediately precedes a decision, Advisory Committee representatives MAY only appeal when there is dissent<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-Dissent>. These decisions are:

  *   Publication of a Recommendation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#rec-publication> or Publication of a Rescinded Recommendation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#proposed-rescinded-rec>,
  *   Activity creation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#ActivityProposal>, modification<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#ActivityModification>, or extension<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#ActivityExtension>,
  *   Working or Interest Group creation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#cfp> or extension<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#charter-extension>,
  *   Changes to the W3C process<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#GAProcess>.
]]


PROPOSED TEXT
[[

When Advisory Committee review immediately precedes a decision, Advisory Committee representatives MAY appeal the following decisions, with the exception that appeal is not permitted if there is no dissent<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-Dissent> and the Director approves the proposal without substantive change . These decisions are:

  *   Publication of a Recommendation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#rec-publication> or Publication of a Rescinded Recommendation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#proposed-rescinded-rec>,
  *   Working or Interest Group creation<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#cfp> or extension<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#charter-extension>,
  *   Relicensing Unfinished Specifications,<http://www.w3.org/2014/10/relicense.html>
  *   Changes to the W3C process<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#GAProcess>.
]]

On 2015-03-20 05:02, chaals@yandex-team.ru<mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:

20.03.2015, 12:02, "Olle Olsson" <olleo@sics.se><mailto:olleo@sics.se>:

On 2015-03-19 22:57, David Singer wrote:

 .......

 For that list of decisions after AC Review that can be appealed, the only exclusion not allowing appeal should be approval of the proposal without substantive change with no AC Review dissent (formal objection).  i.e. everyone agreed and nothing changed so even though its in the list, no appeal in that case.

 And indeed if a re-review is requested, you can’t now comment on unchanged material!

A change somewhere that seems to be local may  actually influence how

other unchanged text will be interpreted. If someone accepted that other

text in its original formulation, they might reject it after a change is

done somewhere else.

Right.



If the director decides to follow the original proposal, and nobody dissented from that, I am happy to say "no appeal".



If the director starts changing things, I'd rather leave in the possibility of appeal on the off-chance that the changes were more controversial than they seemed to the director.



Given the scarcity of appeals (and the overwhelming difficulty of mounting one) I think this an exception-handling mechanism that isn't going to have a high cost, but not having it available seems to be a mistake (as Wayne pointed out in the first place).



cheers



 .....

 David Singer Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

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