RE: Action-140: Obsoleting a recommendation, one more minor fix

(removed Advisory Board mail list)

That looks good.  In the choice for A or B, I don’t think B is good.  I think it is better for the “Director”(staff) to prepare and send out the start of AC Reviews.

For the part about if there’s dissent the Director has to respond publicly.  Isn’t that the same for every Director Decision after an Advisory Committee Review?  If so, all those cases should refer to a section that says that.

This has the line about the AC can appeal.  If the other proposal to say the AC always can appeal, then it doesn’t need to be repeated in all these separate sections.  Actually, there can be a section on Director’s judgment of consensus after AC Reviews and that section could include the part about if there is dissent and also more generally the AC can appeal any decision. All of that applies to all Director Decisions after Review.

From: singer@apple.com [mailto:singer@apple.com]
Sent: Thursday, 23 June, 2016 05:01
To: W3C Advisory Board <ab@w3.org>; Revising W3C Process Community Group <public-w3process@w3.org>
Subject: Action-140: Obsoleting a recommendation, one more minor fix

The AB realized that we might, just possibly, make a mistake and obsolete something that we weren’t aware is actively used; or we might obsolete something and then later it starts getting traction and being used. It should be possible to reverse obsoletion, though we hope and expect that this will be rare.

The attached is a revision which adds the sentence:

"Obsoletion may be reversed, using the same process as for obsoleting a Recommendation. “

and then at the start of the two options, add that, viz.:

"The announcement:

must indicate that this is a Proposal to Rescind, or a proposal to Obsolete, or a proposal to reverse Obsoletion of, a Recommendation;”

Yes, I am aware that other parts of the text could be made more complex and more explicit about reversal, but I don’t think it’s worth it: we can surely work out what the intent of the text is in the rare case of reversal.

Yes, I am aware that we might end up with a case where, with the new knowledge, a decision to Obsolete would not pass, but the decision to reverse obsoletion also does not pass.  However, I think making the reversal process “reversal happens if it can be shown that obsoletion would have failed” is too complex to describe easily. I hope the community ‘does the right thing’ and we don’t get into this case.


David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.