Re: Is the TAG structure harmful? [Was: Fwd: Forced Resignation]

As a user of many web standards, and a reader of this list, the deeper
question is why the election of members isn't open to all members of the
web development community. It feels a little _old school_ to have members
elected by anyone other than the people who do the actual work of building
the web.

I don't doubt that it's very naive, but it's a question that might as well
be asked... since "voting" and membership has been brought up.

Bad?


On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@gmail.com>
wrote:

> [ Bcc public-w3process ]
>
> On the one hand, as long as some set of TAG participants are elected by
> Members, I suspect some see (marginal?) value in limiting the number of
> participants from an organization. OTOH, I think Consortium processes
> actually retard the growth of the Web when those processes prohibit or
> limit willing and capable people from directly contributing to Web
> standards.
>
> I realize at least some (small?) set of TAG members have a personal
> preference to work in a small group (and of course there are some
> advantages to doing so), but besides the issue with the current structure
> restricting the set of qualified participants, I think the TAG's current
> structure is suboptimal for a number of other reasons. Here are some of
> them, and I believe all of them could be addressed by the group being a
> `real` Working Group.
>
> * Publication hacks - since the TAG apparently can't publish `real`
> Recommendations, they get WGs to publish their specs (NB: WebApps' draft
> charter includes two specs that are being led by TAG participants and
> proposed to be jointly published <http://www.w3.org/2014/06/
> webapps-charter.html#coordination>).
>
> * Term limits - as the group does more and more spec work, having a 2-year
> limit  can be disruptive to the completion of a document.
>
> * Voting - instead of spending time and energy on voting, we could divert
> that energy to getting the `best` people involved and actually doing work.
>
> * Charter with clear scope and deliverables.
>
> * IP clarity - extending IP commitments to the participants' organization
> (rather than the individuals) would be clearer and broader and this is
> especially important as the group produces `real` Recommendations.
>
> * Eliminate a 1-off group - using a WG structure would simplify the
> Process Document (i.e. eliminate all text related to the TAG).
>
> TAG members - would any of you stop participating in your areas of
> interest of this group was a Working Group?
>
> -AB
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Forced Resignation
> Resent-Date:    Mon, 30 Jun 2014 12:51:15 +0000
> Resent-From:    www-tag@w3.org
> Date:   Mon, 30 Jun 2014 05:50:17 -0700
> From:   Alex Russell <slightlyoff@google.com>
> To:     www-tag@w3.org List <www-tag@w3.org>
> CC:     www-archive <www-archive@w3.org>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>,
> Chris Wilson <cwilso@google.com>, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>, Jeff Jaffe <
> jeff@w3.org>
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> As you may know, Google recently had the good sense and taste to hire
> fellow TAG member Dominic Denicola. W3C rules insist that, despite being
> /individually elected/ as representatives of the membership, our employment
> situation is more important to the membership than our capacity to make
> meaningful contributions at the TAG. Therefore one of us must resign.
>
> As my term ends soonest, I will be stepping down from my position so that
> Dominic can continue the good work of helping to encourage extensibility in
> the web platform. I will, however, continue to attend meetings through the
> end of my elected term (Jan '15) in protest of what, frankly, is
> appallingly poor organizational design. Evidence of this piles up: last
> year we also lost productive TAG members to vagaries of employment
> interaction with W3C policy.
>
> If the AB's goal with this misbegotten policy were to prevent multiple
> individuals from a firm from influencing the TAG's decisions, I invite them
> to bar me from meetings post my removal. Were it not so, I invite them to
> change the policy.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
>