- From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:20:55 -0500
- To: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
- CC: process-issues@w3.org, Karl Dubost <karl+w3c@la-grange.net>, www-archive@w3.org
Hi, Bijan- Bijan Parsia wrote (on 2/25/09 9:57 AM): > Hello, > > I think it could improve both the perceived and actual transparency and > accountability of the W3C as a whole to have what I've tentatively > called an "Audit Board". An Audit Board would be charged with > investigating specific incidents and situations and producing a report > and making recommendations. A key aspect would be clearly documenting > facts to produce a common base of verifiable information that people can > make judgments on. > > I would hope that such a group would help mitigate some of the heat that > arises as people involved in a FAIL situation recount what happened, > esp. to make a new point. It would also provide a body of knowledge that > e.g., chairs could draw on when coping with issues that arise in WGs. > > There is a concern that such a group could either be a witch hunter's > club, or be systematically unfair to certain people or positions. I > can't really say anything against those concerns. No rule can rule out > bad acting. > > Even if not a board, some sort of report repository wherein things like > Formal Objections can be gathered and analyzed would be, imho, helpful. > At the moment there is a sea of data at the W3C about its history, but > you have to do difficult and dedicated research to ferret it out. Some > of it is hidden from the public and some of it is hidden from the > members, which makes things even trickier. I think this is an interesting idea. I would extend it past FAIL situations, and proactively have it be able to reality check events like contentious Last Call situations where there is a potential Distributed Denial of Spec attack. There are cases where cooler heads from outside the fray might be able to arbitrate a reasonable position, in a public forum, and record why particular decisions were made. Right now, the chair of a WG is tasked with deciding when an objection should be overruled; having public oversight on that strikes me as a good balance of power, and can call into question or justify a chair's decision, for the good of the W3C/Web Standards community as a whole. Like you, I do see some risks in such an arrangement, but it's would be more useful to discuss them as we drill into details. Regards- -Doug Schepers W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs
Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 20:21:04 UTC