Should there be a Public Channel for AC Review Comments (was ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Resolution of Issue-154)

Changing the subject because this is a different issue than that in the CfC.

If someone wants to raise this Issue formally, please do so on the Revising the W3C Process CG Tracker: http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/ 

Steve Zilles

> -----Original Message-----
> From: chaals@yandex-team.ru [mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru]
> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 5:13 PM
> To: Doug Schepers; Stephen Zilles; public-w3process@w3.org
> Subject: Re: ACTION REQUIRED: Call for Consensus: Proposed Resolution of
> Issue-154
> 
> 09.02.2015, 03:33, "Doug Schepers" <schepers@w3.org>:
> > Hi, folks–
> >
> > Is there any sympathy for the position that AC Review should at least
> > have the option of being public?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > There are 2 scenarios in particular that I think would benefit from
> > public visibility:
> >
> > 1) AC reviews of WG charters: it would be useful to be able to talk to
> > the larger community about how much support there is for a particular
> > working group, and which companies are interested in it, so we can
> > build community support and awareness for the group's work;
> 
> I think this highlights the big issue. Members' right to confidentiality should
> include the basic right to not being "outed" through the game of 'guess who is
> missing'…
> 
> > 2) Formal Objections during Proposed Recommendation phase: such
> > objections at the very least delay publication of Recommendations, and
> > it's difficult for chairs and staff contacts to set expectations about
> > the current status, next steps, and expected timelines when we can't
> > talk publicly about the issues raised; just recently, this happened
> > with the Pointer Events specification, and I think the Director would
> > have been better informed by the kind of conversation that the
> > community can bring to bear on such reviews.
> 
> As the objector in question for Pointer Events - and for the record, the
> objector in another case although the group in question doesn't even have an
> active charter so I wonder how they propose a Recommendation - I think that
> - W3C should be much faster to explain the substance of an objection even
> where they are unable to reveal the individual organisation who made it - and
> as noted above I think that providing "hints" through a semi-public review
> would be inappropriate. For example, if I failed to state that I was
> representing the organisation behind the Pointer Events and RDFa objections,
> I believe that many people would have failed to "guess the right answer", and
> taken a positiion on the behaviour of other members that would be either ill-
> informed or represent a gross breach of confidence.
> 
> > Sometimes there are good reasons for these reviews to be Member-only,
> > and even Team-only, and Members should always have those options; but
> > sometimes a Member may wish to express their views in public in a
> > formal way, and I suggest that at least allowing the public option
> > would serve those needs (and the interests of the larger Web community).
> 
> I certainly believe that a "public" option for reviews is useful. In the two cases
> at hand I may or may not have taken it - there is a certain amount of work
> involved in producing a statement for the public that can be skipped for a
> statement that is member-only (as were both our objections mentioned
> above), and a certain further amount that can be skipped by making the
> objection team-only.
> 
> The price of making everything public, is chasing certain discussions further
> "underground" than they need to be. The balance is difficult to write as an
> algorithm. I think it would be useful to provide a clear option for public
> responses in AC reviews - but it would be foolish to expect this to be the norm
> (which I suspect is not to answer at all…)
> 
> cheers
> 
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex chaals@yandex-
> team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 9 February 2015 01:51:14 UTC