jwrosewell: voting

[ekr]

Note: I am transcribing comments from the gdoc to issues.

@jwrosewell suggests:

1. An option for anonymous voting
2. Deleting the text that says "and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires".

[ekr]

I think these are paired because the Process Document does not have anonymous voting, but I could be wrong.

[jwrosewell]

@ekr Thank you. The proposed amendment is to enable anonymous input to decision making due to the heightened fear of retaliation in relation to the subjects of advertising and privacy, inability to contribute publicly due to affiliated organisation policy, and lack of time to engage but still wanting a voice. The latter point is not related to anonymous voting but would lend itself to a vote much like those that the W3C use for charter adoption.

[AramZS]

I do not believe that anonymous voting is traditionally part of Working Group processes? Participation in these groups is recorded and generally on the record, as is all conversations. I also worry that Working Groups tend to have large membership from a small number of organizations and that any large organization could then load up the group to weigh down a vote. Generally, W3C processes have not found anonymous direct voting to be a desirable process and I don't see why it would otherwise be the case here.

[darobin]

Voting is done by Member organisations, not individual participants. This would allow participant stuffing but it also wouldn't allow one to vote against their affiliation (since it's the affiliation that's voting).

All group decisions are subject to Formal Objections and Appeals, including in the (very rare) occurrence of a vote. These would be between hard and impossible to process without knowing who voted what. That's without considering the fact that a vote would only ever take place if consensus weren't found; and for consensus not to be found people would have to speak up on the record for/against a given position.

Finally, let's look at this in privacy terms since it's a privacy question: is that anonymity real? The upper bound for the number of participating Members in a group is in the mid-hundreds — in practice lower than that. The people who might want anonymity (assuming the provided rationale has any merit, which I won't comment on) will be concentrated on one side of the results — others will be open about their position. If there is abstention, it will be guessable using overall engagement (or presence) as a proxy. So very much as it is with the anonymity of third-party tracking, the identity of the anonymous voters will be easily guessed.

[jwrosewell]

In which case how do we assess the views of a wider group of participants than the direct members of the group and ensure their views are considered?

[ekr]

I think this is a reasonable question and one that I've seen other groups grapple with. Ultimately, however, the decision making body for W3C is the membership and so while it's important that the WG hear from other stakeholders, the way that turns into input into the W3C decisionmaking process is by member votes and then ultimately by the Director processing FOs, when he can consider any inputs he wants.

[darobin]

A document is open for review the moment it hits FPWD and groups are required to address substantive issues raised by anyone. Such broad review and the public accountability that goes with are key to the legitimacy of existing documents published by groups and the TAG. Evidently, "substantive" requires that the comment be actionable, technical, not reopen previous discussion, etc.

[AramZS]

In terms of how to assess the wider group of participants and acknowledging that stakeholders of this process may have substantive issues that they do not know how to raise via GitHub issues or will have trouble phrasing technically, I think this problem can be resolved via the mechanism I've proposed at #14 where documents, at each major step in the WG, can leverage the CG to request feedback from non-W3C members (willing to agree to the CG's terms of course) within a specific process and time. We should refine that process if the concern is assuring that the widest possible set of relevant stakeholders is included.

@jwrosewell I assume that an organizational-level vote is not what you are looking for here and it is clear that anonymous individual voting is both not a practice in the W3C and counterproductive to your stated concerns considering the potential vote stuffing issue? If we can agree on that I don't think any more progress can be made on this issue and I would like to close it.

If you feel strongly that an organizational-level vote is the way decision making should be done then that would best be discussed on a separate issue.

[jwrosewell]

Happy to close this issue and incorporate the theme into #13.

I will continue to progress anonymous voting at W3C level.

[AramZS]

Thanks @jwrosewell - I will close here.