RE: Proposal to allow AC to initiate WG Charter AC Review - correcting format

-----Original Message-----
From: wayne carr [mailto:wayne.carr@linux.intel.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 8:49 AM
To: daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com; public-w3process@w3.org >> public-w3process <public-w3process@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Proposal to allow AC to initiate WG Charter AC Review - correcting format







On 2016-06-08 04:25, Daniel Glazman wrote:

> On 07/06/2016 20:49, wayne carr wrote:

>

>> A Member Submission may include a proposed Working Group Charter,

>> where the request is for the Team to submit the proposed Charter to

>> Advisory Committee Review for starting the Working Group.  Incubator

>> specs for every proposed specification deliverable must be part of the Member

>> Submission, along with the Charter.   If the Team acknowledges a

>> Submission, but rejects the proposal to Submit the Charter to AC

>> Review, then the TAG,  AB or 5% of the AC may cause the start of an

>> Advisory Committee Appeal vote as in Section 7.2.  That appeals vote

>> would then decide whether to instruct the Team to prepare the Charter

>> and put it to AC Review. The Director, for budgetary reasons, could

>> choose to offer only minimal team support in the Charter for the proposed group.

>>

> Wayne,

>

> All in all, I like the idea but I'm not so sure it's easily doable.

>

> I have a few issues to discuss: a Charter ready to be submitted to AC

> review/vote should contain information about Co-chairs, duration and

> more importantly Staff Contact. I don't see this happening without

> prior contacts between the submitting organization and W3M so the

> former would know if W3M is opposed to the submission of the Charter

> to ACs or not...



As the proposed text says, the usual path is doing this through the team.  The question is what happens if the Director (i.e. W3C

management) just doesn't want to do it.  What this is about is making sure the Membership can always create a WG if it wants to - that the Team doesn't have a veto over what work the Membership wants to do.

e.g. html5 vs xhtml type debate in the future.  Right now, there is absolutely no way for the Membership to cause a WG Charter to go to AC Review unless the Director agrees to propose it to the AC.  That's what this fixes.



I think it would be better if the Membership could cause an AC Review on a proposed WG Charter if this extreme case every arose. Having fallbacks like that I think prevents the need to ever use them -- just because they're possible.



As to the little things needed in the Charter, in this proposal it still is the Team that makes sure the Charter contains what it needs to -- this is about the AC being able to cause them to do that.



>

> Furthermore, the last sentence from your prose above does not seem

> right to me: the Director is not here to offer team support and deal

> with budget, the CEO is. The Director could veto the submission of such

> a Charter to ACs.



The W3C Process document is written in terms of the "Director" doing

things, not the CEO.  In practice, the Director can delegate any way

they want to -- it's just how the Process document describes the major

roles.



I don't know what you mean by "The Director could veto the submission of

sucha Charter to ACs. "



In this proposal, the Director cannot stop the AC from having an appeal

vote that if it passed resulted in the Charter going to AC Review.

After the AC Review, as always, the Director decides what the consensus

is.  And, as always, that decision can be subject to AC Appeal.  That

doesn't change. Once something gets to AC Review, there already is an

"appeal" process where the Membership can override the Director

decision.  This applies that to getting the AC Review started - so the

AC isn't just reactive to proposals, it can initiate them in the extreme

case where the membership wants something and can't get to an AC Review.



So, this is very unlikely to ever happen -- but, if it does come up the

Membership should be able to decide what WGs W3C forms.



SZ: I think I understand you goal, "not allowing the Team/Director to permanently block a work activity the Membership wants undertaken". I think, however, having charters on Member submissions is not the best way to achieve that goal. Under the current process, "W3C creates a charter based on interest from the Members and Team." And, when the Team gets a charter proposal, they are obligated to announce that they are considering the charter to the AC (Section 5.2.2). This was done to allow AC input to the charter document prior to an AC Review. Since the AC is notified of a potential charter (independently of where it originated) there seems little likelihood of the proposed charter just be buried. I you are concerned about proposed charters just dying, then it would make more sense to allow a (standard) AC appeal of a decision to not progress an announced charter rather than establish a special procedure for Member submissions. This means that if one or more Members submit a proposed charter, then the Team should be required to consider it and to announce their consideration. Maybe this is what you had in mind with your proposal, but, if so, the existing text implies (but does not require) consideration of charters submitted by Members.



There ought to be a minimum support requirement for proposing a new Working Group (and thus a charter) outside the normal W3C Process. We already require approval by at least 5% of the Membership in an AC Review of a proposed charter. It seems to me that requiring 5% of the Membership to support a charter that the Team/Director has refused would, therefore, make sense (because it demonstrates that a charter if sent for an AC Review would get the support it needs to progress and Appeals of Director's Decisions also require support from 5% of the Membership to proceed).



There are (at least) two ways the Team/Director can fail to progress a charter: one is by rejecting the charter outright and the other is by failing to anything to progress it. Assuming the proposed charter is announced (which is already a requirement) then AC Members can tell if either of these approaches is burying the charter and they could appeal (either the rejection decision or the lack of progress (in a 90 or 180 day period) and ask for an AC vote to promptly finish a charter that can be sent for an AC vote.



Would not this be a simpler process?



Steve Z



>

> What if the chartered activity could be handled by an existing Group?

> What if the whole thing does make sense as a Member Submission (a spec)

> but none as a W3C WG?



If it makes no sense to do, I'd think the TAG, AB or 5% of the AC would

not ask for an appeal vote to request that it go to an AC Review of the

charter.  And I'd assume if they did, the AC would not approve letting

the Charter go on to an AC Review.





>

> </Daniel>

>