Re: agenda+ Proposed changes to draft Web Payments Working Group Charter

On Thursday 2015-07-30 20:44 -0500, Ian Jacobs wrote:
> > On Jul 30, 2015, at 7:51 PM, Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > On 2015-07-31 02:12, Ian Jacobs wrote:
> > <snip>
> >> 
> >> Does the following replacement text address your concern?
> >> 
> >>  "The scope of the charter is the set of interfaces necessary to
> > >   enable an interaction between payer user agent and payee Web application.”
> > 
> > This excludes "push" payments which needs an interface between the payer
> > and their account provider.
> 
> That statement does not exclude push payments. Furthermore the charter is explicit
> that push payments are in scope:
> 
>  "These standards define a high-level message flow for a payment from payer to payee either in the form of a credit push (payer initiated) or a debit pull (payee initiated) payment, and can be used to facilitate a payment from any digital payment scheme.”

So I think my concern is this:  it's clear to you which of the two
possibly-contradictory statements in the charter overrides the
other.  But that doesn't mean it's clear to all readers, and I think
it's dangerous to have text that can be interpreted in such
different ways.

The old wording ("focuses on" rather than "is") made it clear which
of the statements was a general description that would be overridden
by more specific statements elsewhere.  Using "is" makes that less
clear.

I think there are two ways to address that concern.  Either:

 (1) revert "is" to "focuses on" or similar, to make it clear that
 the statement is a general description that will be overridden by
 more specific statements elsewhere

 (2) make the statement of what "the scope of the charter is"
 complete, i.e., include everything else that's in the charter

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂
             Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
             What I was walling in or walling out,
             And to whom I was like to give offense.
               - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)