Revising W3C Process Community Group Teleconference -- 16 Dec 2014

<trackbot> Date: 16 December 2014

<scribe> scribe: timeless

Timeline

jeff: there is an AB meeting in January, but it's very early
... there's an AB F2F meeting in Japan, Feb 11-12
... there's a March meeting, but that would be tight to the early May AC meeting

SteveZ: the February AB overlaps w/ CSS in Australia

chaals: i was hoping we were targeting the March meeting
... to allow some time to go back and forth a bit for late April
... which would get us to an end of April document for AC review at the meeting

SteveZ: the tradition is to send it out for one AC review before the final review
... jeff is talking about a LC before Final Review
... w/ March, we don't have that LC

jeff: it's also difficult to get full AC attention on a 2 hour phone call
... a F2F meeting allows more time/detail
... to chaals's point, it's possible that the 2 day AB meeting might raise additional thought that we might bring back to the TF
... if the Feb meeting is a review of the TF's final report
... there may be another iteration
... if we do a thorough review in Feb, and do a superficial review in March, i think that makes sense

chaals: the other point i'd raise is that it isn't like we've made a lot of changes
... if we're cruising along at the pace we're cruising along at, I'd be comfortable w/ less review
... We told AC about Acitivities
... I doubt that it's particularly controversial
... the Coordination Group stuff is probably not controversial
... Good Standing isn't much
... The rest is tweaking

jeff: plus Errata

chaals: if we came to a final conclusion on Errata, I couldn't find it

SteveZ: we haven't yet, it's on the agenda for today

chaals: even so, it's a set of signalled/pre-explained-changes

SteveZ: the last AC review in time for the June AC meeting did produce a substantial number of comments which would have been nice to get sooner

chaals: that's why we produce a draft for AC
... last year we made a lot more changes than this year

<Zakim> jeff, you wanted to partly agree with Chaals

jeff: we haven't made a lot of changes, not a lot of changes on the docket
... since there aren't a lot of changes, let's just get them done by Feb
... to chaals 's point, if we hit on something which is really important and we need more time for that, we can drag it into March
... but i don't think we will need to, so why drag?

SteveZ: my feeling too

Review Open Action Items

<SteveZ> Open Actions

SteveZ: i did action-40

action-40

<trackbot> action-40 -- Steve Zilles to Look at simplifying coordination groups to meet judy's needs -- due 2014-11-18 -- OPEN

<trackbot> http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/actions/40

SteveZ: that's been completed
... i produced a document for action-43

action-43

<trackbot> action-43 -- Steve Zilles to Will confirm that all musts about the team would be covered by delegating from director -- due 2014-12-02 -- OPEN

<trackbot> http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/actions/43

SteveZ: i produced half of action-44

action-44

<trackbot> action-44 -- Steve Zilles to Draft text on coordiantion responsibility for the process document and edit guide to begin collecting best practicres for same -- due 2014-12-16 -- OPEN

<trackbot> http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/actions/44

SteveZ: action-43 is issue-145
... action-40 and action-44 is aresue-129
... issue-140/issue-145 is the Team section

chaals: i changed the CEO from Chair, I couldn't find the resolution of what we'd do for the rest

SteveZ: there wasn't a resolution, it's on the agenda for today
... i went through and found the various places where ceo/chief-operating-officer was referenced
... i believe toward the bottom of the list... i listed 3

<jeff> Steve, link to list?

SteveZ: Chair to AB
... Team appoints chair of these (AC Meetings)
... Director / W3C Chair / COO have responsibility for consensus

chaals: i believe i did those three

jeff: i don't think you changed COO
... Paragraph 5, first sentence

chaals: yes, i left that, i'm waiting for a resolution on that section

SteveZ: prior team / chair leads member relations/liaisons
... it was originally envisioned to have different people for the roles
... that split never happened, and is less likely now
... my recommendation is to drop the split description
... what i thought was useful was Paragraph 2 in section 10 on Liaisons
... which says that Team
... I said change the liaison management from "team" to "team under leadership of the CEO" due to requirements on public communications
... it seemed to me that it made sense to call out a specific person
... i'd drop any further mention of CEO/COO
... in the Team section, you said you (chaals) didn't change COO?
... i'd just remove those lines
... as they refer to roles that don't exist

jeff: i thought we'd leave QQQ

chaals: yes, we leave that in

<SteveZ> The e-mail is http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Dec/0001.html

>> Note: There are responsibilities assigned to the W3C Chair and COO that should be transferred to the CEO with this process revision. These are:

1. The Team appoints the Chair of the Advisory Board<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#AB>, who is generally the W3C Chair (change to CEO)

2. The Team appoints the Chair of these [the AC] meetings (generally the W3C Chair<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#def-W3CChair> or Chief Operating Officer) (change to CEO)

3. The Director, W3C Chair, and COO have the role of assessing consensus within the Advisory Committee.(change "W3C Chair and COO" to "CEO"

chaals: those three changes i have done

<dsinger___> Last change: who declares consensus? The 3 have to be unanimous?

2.2 The W3C Team

Paragraph 2, First sentence, "The Team is led by the Director, W3C Chair, and Chief Operating Officer."

Paragraph 4, First sentence, "The W3C Chair leads Member relations, and liaisons<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#Liaisons> with other organizations, governments, and the public."

Paragraph 5, First sentence, "The Chief Operating Officer (COO) leads the operation of W3C as an organization: a collection of people, Host institutions<http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#hosts>, and processes.

SteveZ: Paragraph 4/5 are there because of the Split of roles, that never actually occurred

jeff: do we still have good standing?

chaals: yes, because we haven't agreed on director's responsibilities
... good standing is removed, but if the rest of the paragraph is going, then i can wait

jeff: why remove the paragraph?

chaals: it repeats content already included

SteveZ: w/ one exception, the director's responsibilities are distributed throughout the document
... it's the "Lead Technical Architect" line
... that's the one piece not already covered elsewhere

jeff: i'd like to offer an opinion, and at least discuss w/ Director + AB
... we still have a significant document (10 pages?)
... the role of director in w3c is pretty essential
... i don't think redundancy is bad
... if you think this paragraph is a poor replica
... there are other ways to fix it
... The director is the Lead Technical Architect, among them are ...
... i think it's important to have something about the Director early on in the document

SteveZ: the sentence about Lead Technical Architect is the one thing that isn't elsewhere
... i suggest it remain, but possibly elsewhere
... i strongly believe that duplication leads to confusion

<Dsinger_> Duplication leads to errors when one section is revised and not the other

SteveZ: i'd suggest text that says "his roles are described throughout this document"

jeff: we mention things where they show up, and in section 2 we say how they fit
... in 2.3 AB we say AB manages evolution of the process document
... we say it again in section 12
... do we remove that redundancy as well?
... we have them listed in different sections because they're different perspectives

chaals: yes, absolutely, i want to remove all of the redundancies
... if this document were 1/3 shorter but not having repeated sentences saying almost the same thing
... it would be a lot easier for people to look at/understand
... or identify missing bits
... there are serious Lacuna in this document
... i'd really love to be able to say "any time i can find 2 places that say the same thing, the editor is authorized to identify one and remove it"

<Zakim> dsinger, you wanted to ask who declares consensus

Dsinger_: i mostly agree w/ chaals, about removing redundancy
... but in the case jeff sited, when you're reading about AB, you need to know about AB
... and when you're reading about Process, you need to know about it too
... making it shorter and not repeating it is a good goal, but not hard-and-fast

jeff: i'm glad to hear what Dsinger_ said
... he said he agreed w/ chaals, but he agreed w/ me

<Dsinger_> I agreed with two people who disagree! Neat trick

jeff: to chaals, when we do the edit task and remove 5 pages of text by removing redundancies, then i'll probably be supportive of that
... but as Dsinger_ said, you need to talk about the AB, and you need to talk about the Process

chaals: there's a reason i work the way i do
... text change proposal, one-by-one
... saying "here's the redundancy [i think i see]"
... the frustration i have is that we've spent literally hours each on a paragraph
... the ability to get through large chunks in a quarter is hard

<jeff> [/me suspects that we will spend fewer than hours if we talk about worthwhile changes or consistent changes]

chaals: i'm happy to write off this paragraph
... i'm happy to take a proposal whereby i line up pairs of statements, people say yes, i axe one, later they come back and read the document, and discover some redundancy should be put back
... i'm looking for a modus-operandi where we do some operandi
... only touching one line is entirely justified, but it's a circular argument

SteveZ: i proposed a concrete proposal: leave lead-architect line, drop all other pieces since they're listed elsewhere, and we add a small bit to liaison statement that seems useful
... from what i've heard so far, i think everyone is happy w/ that
... w/ an exception about having more text of director's roles
... my concern is that either we put in pointers to all his roles, or put in none
... putting in pointers to half is bad, since it leaves the wrong impression (implying that it's all roles)
... i could put together a list of links, but even that's dangerous

chaals: if you draft a set of links, i'd want to stop editing the document

Dsinger_: my suggestion is that we look at a tool is that there's a tool that automatically indexes
... a book is written w/ a tool that generates an index
... someone wants to look up director, they use the index
... why don't we put that on the back burner and see if we get a solution to that

chaals: i don't have such a tool
... i don't have a lot of motivation to look for/learn one

timeless: +1 to Dsinger_
... we can ask someone else to help us get such a tool
... and we can do it for a future year's iteration of the document

Dsinger_: can we ask darobin about it?

SteveZ: i think Bikeshed might be able to do it
... as timeless points out, this isn't an issue for this year's version of the document
... jeff are you ok w/ a sentence "the additional duties of the director are described throughout the document."?

<Zakim> jeff, you wanted to repeat his previous suggestion

jeff: similar to SteveZ 's suggestion "director has role as L-T-A, responsibilities are described elsewhere in the document, some of the /key/ responsibilities include consensus, publishing TR, appointing chairs, handling appeals of WG decisions"
... i think that gives a helpful flavor
... it doesn't have to be linked, it doesn't have to be comprehensive

timeless: i can live with that

SteveZ: i can live with that
... if it solves the problem and allows us to go with that

<inserted> Dsinger_: ok by me

chaals: i'm ok with "director is L-T-A"
... i despise additional text, i think it's a terrible idea

SteveZ: 5 people is hardly representative of the organization
... 4 people ... isn't bad

<Dsinger_> In cases like this I defer to the person willing to edit, however...

SteveZ: do i hear objections to jeff 's paragraph?

chaals: mine

SteveZ: acknowledging objection

chaals: resolution is to remove Paragraph's 4+5
... add missing word
... and add director's duties are described throughout the document, some key ones include

RESOLUTION: remove paragraphs 4 and 5 of section 2.2 and in paragraph 3 add "director's duties are described throughout the document, some key ones include"

Issue-129

<trackbot> Issue-129 -- Should the Process define Coordination Groups? -- open

<trackbot> http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/issues/129

chaals: if we agree that the resolution to issue-129 is that we remove Coordination Groups and make no further changes
... we were leaning there

SteveZ: that's where i believe we are
... i'd make one change to the resolution, that we move mechanisms to a section of the guide for best practices on coordination

jeff: i don't think we decided on last week's call to drop coordination groups

<Dsinger_> ...and wide review should normally include review by coordination groups?

jeff: SteveZ, would you be willing to discuss the final resolution with judy?
... i thought last week's discussion was very good

SteveZ: i should have copied judy on action-44
... which says that there's already sufficient text for coordination

chaals: is there support?

[ yes ]

SteveZ: any objections?

[ none ]

RESOLUTION: Remove the material on Coordination Groups from the Process Document

<Dsinger_> No objection

<chaals> action-44 is outstanding but associated

<chaals> ACTION: Steve to communicate the resolution of issue-129 to Judy Brewer [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2014/12/16-w3process-minutes.html#action01]

<trackbot> Created ACTION-45 - Communicate the resolution of issue-129 to judy brewer [on Steve Zilles - due 2014-12-23].

<chaals> thanks folks

Errata

SteveZ: we're waiting on PSIG
... i think there was some progress
... people realized that the problem they were worrying about wasn't really a problem since they were only looking at half of the section
... i only gave them text for the section that was changing (insufficient context)

[ Adjourned ]

trackbot, end meeting

- DRAFT -

Revising W3C Process Community Group Teleconference

16 Dec 2014

Attendees

Contents

Timeline

Review Open Action Items

Issue-129

Errata

Summary of Action Items

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