WorkMode

From WEBAPPS

The purpose of this wiki is to consolidate some of the Web Applications WG's (aka WebApps) Real Working Modes including: Participation and Communication, Meetings, Consensus, Mail List usage, links to important resources, etc.

Note the WG's Charter formally defines many aspects of the group's working mode. In all cases, the Charter and/or the W3C Process Document overrides the information in this wiki. Nevertheless, this wiki contains additional information about how the group really works and as such, this information may be particularly useful to new members of the WG.

This document is a Living Document and as such will change. Members of the WG are encouraged to edit (e.g. to embellish, correct, etc.) the information in this document.

1 Participation and Communication
2 Patent Policy
3 Meetings? What Meetings?
4 Consensus and Call for Consensus
5 Mail List Policy, Usage, Etiquette, etc.
6 IRC
7 Links to Group Resources

Participation and Communication

WebApps' formal Participation and Communication models are documented in the Participation and Communications sections of its Charter, respectively.

Strictly speaking, only the Chairs and Editors have firm participation requirements. However, all WG members are strongly encouraged to participate in all of the specifications in progress.

A WG member may participate in various ways including:

Attending one of the group's formal meetings
Participating in discussions on the WG's mail lists: public-webapps, www-dom, and public-script-coord
Being an Editor of one or more of the group's active specifications
Participate in discussions on the group's #webapps IRC channel

Participation from the Public, via our Public mail lists is also welcome. However, see the Patent Policy section.

The group uses the public-webapps mail list for all of its technical discussions except the www-dom mail list is used for the DOM specs and the public-script-coord mail list is used for the Web IDL spec.

The widgetspecs Twitter account is used to make public announcements about the group's Widgets Specs.

Patent Policy

The WG's Charter defines the Patent Policy for this group:

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

A consequence of the group's Patent Policy is that inputs for the group's specifications from non-WG participants is not permitted. See the W3C Patent Policy FAQ titled How should Working Groups handle contributions from non-participants (e.g., meeting guests or on public lists)? for more information about contributions from non-WG participants.

Meetings? What Meetings?

Some of WebApps' work progresses without any formal meetings at all -> all of the technical work is done via the mail list and IRC. This work mode is true for most of the API specs with the one exception of semi-regular DOM 3 Events teleconfs.

Formal meetings are used by the group's participants that are working on the Widgets Specs. For more information on the Widgets meetings see the Widgets Telecon schedule. The Widgets group also has 3-4 face-to-face (f2f) meetings per year.

The consortium usually has an annual All Working Group f2f meeting week and this group normally has one or more f2f meetings during that week.

See WebApps' Meeting Wiki for information about the group's formal meetings.

Consensus and Call for Consensus

Consensus is a very important part of the W3C process and is formally codified in the Process Document as follows:

Consensus is a core value of the W3C. To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs to ensure that groups consider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve them, whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants of the group or by others (e.g., another W3C group, a group in another organization, or the general public).

Since much of WebApps' work is done without formal meetings, the group uses a Call for Consensus (aka CfC) mechanism (typically email) to formally gather input on a specific question such as Is spec X ready to publish as a Last Call Working Draft?. When a CfC is issued, an explicit response from WG members is preferred and note that the lack of a response will always be considered assent i.e. agreement with the proposal.

Most CfC's are done on the public-webapps mail list and the comment period is one week. However, in some rare cases, for example when Member confidentially is an issue, the member-webapps mail list is used.

Note the CfC mechanism is not normally used with some of the WG's work, for instance, the Widgets group does not typically use CfCs because they have regularly scheduled meetings.

Mail List Policy, Usage, Etiquette, etc.

The Consortium has formal Mail List policies and procedures yet also accommodates some flexibility on how mail lists are used:

Each W3C mailing list has its own policies regarding who may post to the list. Those subscribed to each list are generally able to post directly to the list without delay; those who are not may be subject to manual moderation (at least the first time they post.)

See W3C Mailing List and Archive Info and W3C Guidelines for Email Attachment Formats for more information.

WebApps' members appreciate and encourage frank technical discussions on our mail lists but all discussions must be done in a respectful manner. Please note this respect requirement is codified in the Process Document via the following participation criteria "Social competence in one's role". Additionally, see Positive Work Environment Task Force (Member-only).

We expect participant using our mail lists to adhere to the following:

Messages should be encoded using plain text
Messages should not use top-posting
Attachments must follow the W3C Guidelines for Email Attachment Formats, in particular:
- Avoid unnecessary email attachments.
- Use an attachment only when it is likely to benefit to recipients. Otherwise, place the information (in plain text format) in the body of your message.
- If an attachment is necessary, avoid formats that are virus prone, proprietary or platform dependent. For example, whenever possible you should use HTML instead of MS Word, PowerPoint or PDF. (Ideally, use XHTML or HTML4.)
- Follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

IRC

WebApps uses two different channels of the W3C's IRC system (irc.w3.org; port 6665):

#webapps - for Public technical discussions; this channel is continuously logged/archive
#wam - for Member-confidential discussions; this channel is NOT logged

An HTML interface to the W3C's IRC system is available at http://cgi.w3.org/member-bin/irc/irc.cgi. See Meeting Resources for more information about the W3C's IRC system.