Re: Summary of TAG resolutions on Director-Free Process proposals

On 9/15/19 8:16 AM, Jeff Jaffe wrote:
> [dropping Process CG and AB]
> 
> [adding back AB members who were in the TAG session]
> 
> On 9/13/2019 5:21 AM, fantasai wrote:
>>
>> Topic: W3C Objection Decision Council
>>
>> RESOLVED: Council should pick its own chair, per issue, by consensus,
>>           falling back to a vote if that fails. (Goal is to choose a
>>           neutral chair for the topic.)
>>
>> RESOLVED: Chair must be a member of the Council
>>
>> RESOLVED: If FO not resolved in X days, chair MUST report status to AC.
>>           Report MAY be public. Suggest 90 < X < 180. 
> 
> It is not clear to me that these were proper resolutions of the TAG since I 
> had raised an issue with them, which AFAICT was not addressed.  I apologize 
> that due to the use of Google Hangouts, the fact that I was in China, and poor 
> connectivity (I was driving in a car for much of the session), I did not 
> adequately tee up my issue.  Now with more time and space, let me raise the 
> issue more completely.

It's up to the chair of the TAG to confirm whether these are proper 
resolutions of the TAG, but they did seem to reflect the consensus of the TAG 
members in the room, they were each posted on the white board explicitly for 
consideration by the TAG, and there was an explicit call for consensus prior 
to each point being marked as resolved.
> My concern is that the Council, allowing itself up to 180 days to reach 
> decisions, and potentially guided by their own groupthink could provide DoS 
> attacks on getting new work chartered.

That's a fair point, and maybe the number of days here should be fewer for 
issues against charters than for issues in technical reports.

I will note the suggested number of days here wasn't particularly important to 
the TAG, only that the Council be required to report back periodically if it 
didn't resolve an issue--specifically in order to prompt it to make progress 
on stalled issues.

> My modest proposal is that the CEO be the convener and driver of the Council
> to make sure that things don't get stuck.  I want to make sure that W3C has
> someone involved who can be directly accountable to member concerns.

The TAG was pretty clear that it wanted to limit the power of the Team within 
the Council, and that it wanted the Council to be able to choose a neutral 
chair per issue when possible.

In any case the CEO is ex officio a member of the Council: if there are 
concerns about progress, the CEO can address the Council directly either way.

Personally, I think the CEO should not be ex officio chair of the Council -- 
CEOs should be chosen for their CEOing ability, not their chairing ability 
necessarily, so choosing among the membership of the Council makes more sense 
to me than making the CEO chair the Council always.

> (Also, a potential concern, is that if communities feel that the Council does 
> not allow them to get their work done, that it might encourage people who do 
> not have the deep technical expertise of today's TAG to run for the TAG simply 
> to ensure that they have a voice in the Council.  That would be an 
> anti-pattern if that were to happen.  We need the top technical experts on the 
> TAG.)

They can always run for the AB instead. :)

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 16 September 2019 09:34:03 UTC