Minutes: W3C Process CG Telecon 24 September 2025

Summary of Resolutions:

* Resolution: Merge pull request 1083
  https://github.com/w3c/process/pull/1083

* Actions:

  - Brent to ensure the AB is onboard with this plan to create a branch, and will proactively let the TAG chairs know the plan regarding a new branch
  - Florian to merge those PRs and if issues with merging arise, reach out to the CG

Ian

Full minutes: https://www.w3.org/2025/09/24-w3process-minutes.html
And also pasted below for search...
=======================================================================

Revising W3C Process Community Group
24 September 2025

[2]Previous meeting. [3]Agenda. [4]IRC log. [5]Next meeting.

Attendees

Present
Brent Zundel, Philippe Le Hégaret, François Daoust,
Theresa O'Connor, Elika Etemad, Ted Thibodeau, Florian
Rivoal, Ian Jacobs

Regrets
-

Chair
Brent

Scribe
Ian

Contents

1. [6]Simplification ideas for the process
2. [7]Open PRs
3. [8]Summary of action items
4. [9]Summary of resolutions

Meeting minutes

Simplification ideas for the process

<brentz> [10]w3c/AB-memberonly#293

Brentz: AB also looking at a process refactoring; will
interview groups during TPAC

Florian: Process 2020 includes a Rec Amendment
process...proposed amendments are included as preview notes.
Then there's a process for approving the amendments (using the
full process).
… we also tried to make it easier (fewer stages to go through
than the default set of stages)
… but we introduced some "inconsistencies" compared to the
normal path
… it's kind of weird.
… in the meantime (more recently) we have simplified the
"ordinary" rec track process (and in a less bizarre way)
… so one simplification is to recast the amendment process to
align with the new simplified "ordinary" rec track process.

Florian: Another class of of simplification will be to review
(and perhaps remove) some terminology.

hober: +1

<plh> [11]Confusing inconsistencies between stages of the REC
track for documents and for amendments #938

Florian: Tooling may be helpful. It would be good to have a way
to do Rec maintenance without annotations and without dropping
quality controls.

Ian: What should the CG be doing at this particular time in
light of AB revisiting the process?

Brentz: The rough plan is that the Process CG cleans up the
GitHub repo to see what issues are still outstanding and have a
clean slate
… so that we have a starting point.
… that's what the AB wants the CG to start with.
… meanwhile the AB will formulate a questionnaire and plans to
get feedback from the community

brentz: The AB will then collate information and that will
inform AB plans for a more significant refactor.
… survey will inform how significant the refactoring should be
… in addition to cleaning up the GitHub repo, the AB would like
to hear from the CG input on what should stay and what should
be simplified.

hober: Regarding simplifying the amendment process: the 2020
process has been in place for about 5 years. How many times has
someone tried to use this amendment process?

plh: 4 or 5

Florian: That's the number of times amended specs have
graduated.

hober: Chicken and egg problem if the tooling is important to
making this process easier.
… it would be good to know (but hard to measure) how many
people were scared off before trying this process.

<brentz> anecdotally, at least two of my group haven't even
attempted the amendment process when updating specs

hober: maybe we don't need the amendment process at all

plh: My advice would be to talk to the Chairs before doing
anything.
… we are struggling to get specs maintained. It's hard to find
people to maintain specifications; it's not the process.

<Zakim> brentz, you wanted to lay out my understanding of the
plan

<hober> +10000 plh

plh: It's not a tooling issue. People just want to edit a
single document and not have to deal with annotations. Before
designing a solution, please wait for TPAC discussion. Need to
find out how to make maintenance as low cost as possible.

tidoust: I see 4 ways to maintain a spec in the W3C process.
… (tidoust mentions all of them)
… some groups use different approaches (e.g., delta specs and
CSS WG)
… my concern is that I don't know as TC what to recommend among
the four approaches.
… the nuances are thin to me. It would be good if we could
simplify that.
… or at least explain the differences.

<hober> +10000 tidoust

Florian: There are different approaches for different
preferences. Where it gets tricky is that people want to get
the Rec stamp without doing all the work.
… what we do depends on what we want (e.g., quality controls,
patent policy, etc.)
… the area where we can simplify is amendments

Florian: In terms of effort, the thing I'm proposing is "medium
effort"
… if we are planning a major revamp, then we should not do it
yet.

TallTed: Tess asked about whether people have tried to do
maintenance
… several groups in which I participated have tried to do the
proposed changes w/ markup
… it's painful

TallTed: -1 to benign editor model. Editors are doing a
difficult task but I think that some people do a better job
than others representing the will of the group

TallTed: I've seen editors rewrite documents over a weekend,
for example

TallTed: I think not all recs need to go through the full Rec
track process.
… but many do
… there has to be a better way of tracking changes, flagging
proposed changes with rationale; but manual markup is painful.

Florian: The WHATWG has a small number of very senior editors;
W3C has more editors and this diversity suggests more
guardrails.

Open PRs

<brentz> [12]w3c/process#1083

<plh> +1 to Florian

<Ian> +1 to merge

RESOLUTION: Merge 1083

<florian> [13]https://github.com/w3c/process/pulls

Florian: A number of PRs depend on the AB (and/or TAG)
… I'm not comfortable landing anything prior to having AB
direction.

brentz: In the absence of direction from the AB would be merge
things into an AB/TAG branch that the AB can look at during its
considerations.

hober: I'm fine with that

hober: I think the AB is unlikely to come back to some of these
issues immediately.

<plh> +1 to have a separate branch

Florian: I'm generally fine with a separate branch, but it's
very important to communicate clearly this is a separate branch
that does not represent AB-approved content

Brentz: I will be the point person if concerns arise.

ACTION: Brent to ensure the AB is onboard with this plan to
create a branch, and will proactively let the TAG chairs know
the plan regarding a new branch

Ian: I propose we prioritize edits that help get work done, and
deprioritize org topics

Hober: The AB is interested in both sides of the house: group
work and org/governance

brentz: I think the AB is also looking into modularization

<brentz> [14]https://github.com/w3c/process/
pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22Topic%3A+AB%2FTAG+discipli
ne%22

brentz: I will be looking at ll the PRs with the AB/TAG
discipline topic

ACTION: Florian to merge those PRs and if issues with merging
arise, reach out to the CG

<brentz> [15]https://github.com/w3c/process/
issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Aupdated-asc

<brentz> [16]w3c/process#1073

Florian: I think that 1073 can be addressed in pubrules rather
than in the process.

brentz: Reading it, I'm thinking similarly.

plh: Our registries document how they are to be modified.
… and the processes may be different.
… the process document does not (and should not) define a
single registry update processes.

<brentz> discussing [17]w3c/process#326

Ian: Suggest we close 326 because we are working on this and
it's very high level

(We add tab "propose to close')

Ian: Also suggest home work that people look at issues to close

Florian: I also suggest chatting with Brent to find issues to
close

Summary of action items

1. [18]Brent to ensure the AB is onboard with this plan to
create a branch, and will proactively let the TAG chairs
know the plan regarding a new branch
2. [19]Florian to merge those PRs and if issues with merging
arise, reach out to the CG

Summary of resolutions

1. [20]Merge 1083


Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by
[21]scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).


 --
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
https://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel: +1 917 450 8783

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2025 18:56:15 UTC