W3C

– DRAFT –
Revising W3C Process Community Group

24 March 2021

Attendees

Present
!, cwilso, dsinger, fantasai, florian, jeff, jrosewell, plh, TallTed, tantek, Ted_Thibodeau, wseltzer
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
fantasai, jeff, plh

Meeting minutes

David: trying to do some clean-ups on our issues

Florian: addition of 310 and 313 were a mistake. I don't recall doing them

#509

https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/509

GitHub: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/509

Florian: there is a proposal on the table for #509.
… (summarizing the proposal)
… doing rec-tracks, then note, then rec-track could introduce submarine patents
… ... would be confusing to allow it
… not to be encouraged

fantasai: if you switch back rather than restarting, you retain previous commitment. but this is confusing and people might not understand it. But strictly better than restarting at FPWD
… we could allow for that and the patent implication are a bit complicated

david: this is a case that shouldn't arise

Ted: having been in a # of groups. when a group can discontinued, it goes into Notes. The intent is that the Note can be picked up by a subsequent working group

Florian: you can move to discontinued Draft (a parked state)

Ted: then you need to inform the groups about this
… we have groups in this case right now

Florian: it's not in the current process yet

<Zakim> wseltzer, you wanted to discuss Patents

wseltzer: our goal is to understand the provenance of the contributions and make informed decisions. You don't need to prohibit
… if the contributions are fine, why not?

Florian: we can move to "should not"
… I don't want to encourage folks
… "should not", with someone to check what you're doing

dsinger: don't need to solve this today

Define minutes

dsinger: #511, #512

github: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/511

Florian: since we talk about recordings of meetings, we need to define that you don't need permissions for minutes

wseltzer: I recommend avoiding defining the precision of minutes

wseltzer: a summary of the conversation is fine for example
… we don't need to be prescriptive

<TallTed> "Relevant details of the discussion...?"

<wseltzer> "summary"

florian: record of the discussion is required but you don't have to be precise

Ted: how about "relevant details" ?

Florian: I'll look into the sentence more

david: are people ok with us defining minutes? (details to be worked on)

Jeff: do we really need to define minutes?

florian: we are talking recordings and automatic transcript. if we don't distinguish minutes from those, it may create confusion

[going back and forth on whether we need this or not]

Jeff: if it becomes a point of debate and we cannot close on it, it's not worth blocking on it]

#312

Florian: the pull request was worked and agreed on. #312 is no longer relevant imho.

david: ok so once the director free branch is done, we can close

#513

Florian: do we need further work on this or not? I'm fine not adding a Note
… we can remove the Note and see how Ralph reacts

Resolution: absent strong objection, we will remove the Note

Florian: by end of March

#505

David: we need to ask the Team if it's possible to have alternate AC Reps

Florian: the Process can say it's allowed and let the systeam look into it

wseltzer: this is a big change to the functioning of W3C. It could have real change on how the body operates
… so I'd rather have a discussion with the Members if they like the proposal
… the member relation team have been fielding other questions like how we communicate with AC Reps, etc.
… I can take this question to them

dsinger: ok

GitHub: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/505

dsinger: this is intended to resolve when the individual is away

#514

dsinger: just a heads-up. if you have opinions, please comment

#436

fantasai: I think we're ready to merge

florian: Mike Smith has an objection to this

<cwilso> 1+

cwilso: I got pushback internally as well
… "this will be a fair amount of work for the team to manage"
… the tooling with GitHub is valuable and we don't want to lose the efficiency
… to make any change will require a lot of pre-repo in order to make it work

fantasai: it's a "SHOULD", not a "MUST". we understand there is a lot of work to get there
… it's not acceptable to have documents that are not in our control

<wseltzer> [the counterpoint is that we should be able to delegate tooling to others with more specific expertise there]

fantasai: we have the backing of the AB and we should merge the pull request

delegating tooling is fine. Delegating ultimate control of our publications is not.

florian: I agree with the assessments. we will need a fair amount of socializing to make it so but that shouldn't block progress

https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/436#issuecomment-804819731

florian: setting this up will require work but it's not hard
… am I missing something?

cwilso: I'm trying to channel a bunch of other people feedback. the per-repo seems small
… the preferred trusted URLs are not just w3.org
… we have links to github.io all over the place
… I get why it's a good thing to try to address but it will be a large amoount of work
… I know that a bunch of folks will be resistant to that

florian: but unless we start with W3C, we can't start fixing things

Jeff: I have long advocated with those changes should be "SHOULD"
… you set the direction, put in place, may find out it's a lot of work, decide whether it would become a MUST or not
… did anyone go back with the objectors and propose a SHOULD?

it *is* a SHOULD atm

Jeff: rather than having those discussion

plh: ...

plh: I encouraged to comment on GH, and glad did

plh: Some groups will resist

plh: We're saying it's ok to use GH, but not github.io

plh: We're using github.com URLs all over the place

plh: there's a mental block we have to face, and justify that is going to be difficult

plh: For better or worse, we're using github

plh: Yes, we have backups. If domain goes down tomorrow, we're in trouble, because all our links will break

plh: So we're going to get resistance from the groups

plh: If we can eliminate the time between ED and TR by encouraging publication asap, my hope is we can avoid these problems

dsinger: Encourage Team Contact discussion

dsinger: I found a document that says "This is an Editor's Draft and is the product of a Working Group"

dsinger: which is a contradiction. ED is edit'rs work, WG's work is WD

dsinger: Also anyone can fork a repo, and have documents that claim to be W3C documents

dsinger: Is it a W3C doc? If it's on w3.org it is.

dsinger: It's not just a question of URL, but also brand identity

dsinger: We're in a mess here

<Zakim> dsinger, you wanted to comment on cleanup

dsinger: groups have found publishing WDs to be onerous, by introducing proxies to github.io can make it easier

dsinger: ..

dsinger: sometimes groups let editor do as s/he wants until corrected, especially in earlier phases. That's OK

dsinger: need to communicate that WG's draft is the Working Draft

dsinger: Set up whatever automatic systems needed to make the WD live on /TR

florian: I suggest we have a fair amount of outreach and documentation to do, and we shoudl do it, but text in PR is in line with resolutions from AB so let's merge it

florian: Would like to encourage work on /TR

florian: but not all things groups produce are on /TR

<Zakim> plh, you wanted to say we cannot use w3.org btw

florian: We have references to other types of documents that are also on github.io and need a better home

plh: I should prioritize getting work on /TR

plh: reducing that time, to get that problem to go away

plh: We're not proposing to stop github.io, but to put a proxy on it.

plh: we'll have to create a new domain for that for security reasons

plh: I'll be focusing on /TR for the next few months

<TallTed> proxy thru `github-io.w3.org`? just a thought

dsinger: I think Team needs to have a discussion, getting back to state where EDs and WDs are distinguished and /TR represents our current activity

fantasai: I think we should merge the PR now

<cwilso> I think you'll see complaints

dsinger: Anyone oppose merging the PR now and iterating?

dsinger: going to see complaints

fantasai: Yes, and we need to discuss. But we need to move forward.

cwilso: You're going to see complaints

cwilso: In an ideal world we would have not lost control, but there's a lot of resistance to that

cwilso: It's a SHOULD, not a MUST, but there are a all kinds of different ways that URLs are being used

cwilso: in how drafts are dealt with

cwilso: and going back to old way of using /TR is ...

florian: If you publish WDs frequently and only refer to that, you don't have a problem

florian: You can also not do that, and set up a proxy and you're good

dsinger: most of the resistance I'm getting is from the Team

<cwilso> but that's not what a large proportion of editors do, and how they work

dsinger: If Team Contacts aren't willing to do this, we have a problem

jeff: I'm hearing AC rep pushing back

jeff: and he's AC for a lot of editors, so a lot of push back

jeff: Agree we need to move forward, but need to make assignments to move forward

jeff: Give an action to plh to broker some conversations between Florian/fantasai and Team Contacts

jeff: And an action to cwilso to broker a conversation between Fantasai/Florian and resistance in his company

<cwilso> I am willing to accept that action.

jeff: Let's have that dialog

dsinger: also discussions around /TR for WDs etc.

fantasai: [we should merge the PR and point people at the draft, the point of the draft is to have something to look at ]

dsinger: concern people will be upset

florian: Should I set up an editor's draft so we can point at a document?

florian: more readable than a PR

<Zakim> wseltzer, you wanted to say persuasion through easier tools, rather than procedural compuslion and to hear the guidance to the team

<fantasai> wseltzer: How can we make W3C the most attractive place to work? If we're hearing from editor's that procedural requirements are a problem, then we need to take that into account.

<fantasai> dsinger: We want to have a good brand and be a good place to work.

wseltzer: how can we make W3C the most attractive platform to work in? If we get pushback, we should listen to it

weiler: what about using a downgraded tech?

dsinger: trying to influence the Chinese gvt through our decisions is unlikely

weiler: I'm concerned about them imposing a downgraded solution on us

florian: there is nothing we can do anything about it unless we're willing to ignore folks in China
… it's unfortunate but we can't fix it

Wrapping

dsinger: please clean up our pull requests/ discussions on GH
… we avoided wide review so far

fantasai: let's close that since it's covered in the Guide
… propose to close #130

Resolution: close #130

Summary of resolutions

  1. absent strong objection, we will remove the Note
  2. close #130
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 127 (Wed Dec 30 17:39:58 2020 UTC).

Diagnostics

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Succeeded: s/down to tomorrow/down tomorrow/

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Maybe present: David, Ted, weiler