RE: Evergreen Formal Objection handling (ESFO)

Sorry for top-posting - the web based email client I'm using doesn't quote messages properly on response.

> W3C does not confer "status" to WDs; they are not "Recommended" for usage.  In this proposal W3C would confer status to ERs.  Ordinarily W3C does not confer status without a formal CfC of a WG.  I'm proposing that for ERs we do not require a formal CfC, relying instead on procedural consensus.

This seems to me to be a very strange proposal. The way that a WG establishes consensus is defined by its Charter. That Charter specifies a Decision Policy (or if not, a default one should apply), and the Chair will come to a conclusion about consensus when the terms of the Decision Policy have been met for a specific proposal. There is therefore no meaningful difference between a "CfC" and "procedural consensus". If it seems like a good idea to have different decision policies for ER publication than any other kind of publication, that's a conversation to be had when assessing a draft Charter.

For a concrete example, let's say a group has a 2 week review period defined in the Decision Policy for any proposal to allow for adequate review time. And let's say the group has a document being published as an ER. The mechanism for changes to that ER might be to review a pull request. It would be reasonable to say that substantive changes being made must be done by pull request and the pull request is a form of CfC for adopting the change into the ER; then after the 2 week period has passed, if there is consensus to merge the pull request, the ER can be updated. If the group is happy with that way of working and understands it, then that should be possible. The group should set a high standard for accepting such pull requests, of course.

Nigel


________________________________
From: Jeff Jaffe [jeff@w3.org]
Sent: 15 March 2019 13:08
To: Florian Rivoal
Cc: Siegman, Tzviya; Chris Wilson; David Singer; W3C Process CG; Philippe Le Hegaret
Subject: Re: Evergreen Formal Objection handling (ESFO)



On 3/15/2019 12:46 AM, Florian Rivoal wrote:


On Mar 15, 2019, at 4:19, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org<mailto:jeff@w3.org>> wrote:


Aside from FO, consensus might also be different between REC track and Evergreen.  REC track has formal steps of advancement and generally WGs have formal CfC's that a document is ready for advancement.  So a document won't get endorsement by W3C without a formal CfC.  On the Evergreen track, there is continuous W3C endorsement of an ER, but I don't envisage daily CFC's in an Evergreen WG.

I don't see why an Evergreen track would necessarily need less or more CFC's than the REC track. The main thing about evergreen is about simplifying publication. In the existing REC track, working group operating under the current process and under the guidance of their chair can and do put out Working Drafts at a fast pace, for now they cannot do that with CRs or RECs, but for WDs there's no problem. Different groups have different modalities about how they do that, and strike a different balance in terms of the autonomy of the Editor, but I see no reason to believe this would be any different under evergreen. Email/github plus weekly calls is a perfectly fine way to determine what should go into the ER if that's what one group wants to do. So is asynchronous CfC if that's what they want to do.

The process as it is is flexible enough to let Groups and their chairs determine what is consensual and should go into the draft in a productive way.

I agree with your process-level observations.  WDs can be published at a fast pace and ERs can be published at a fast pace.

W3C does not confer "status" to WDs; they are not "Recommended" for usage.  In this proposal W3C would confer status to ERs.  Ordinarily W3C does not confer status without a formal CfC of a WG.  I'm proposing that for ERs we do not require a formal CfC, relying instead on procedural consensus.


—Florian



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