Update solid-panels.md

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

A pull request was opened and merged to this file a few days ago.

This is important and therefore needs to presented at the W3C Weekly call to give the Solid community the chance to comment as well as the weekly Solid Team meeting for them to incorporate the thoughts of the Solid community. It also needs to be approved through a merge from the Solid Leader for legitimacy.

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

Considering some people may have multiple areas of expertise and we are not sure about all the areas of expertise we will need perhaps we should list the areas of expertise of each of the panel members so we can quickly assemble experts on an area when needed.

It's useful to have a defined group of people who have skin in the game. The question would be what defines having skin in the game? One proposal is:

• being a regular active user of Solid
• being a ID provider
• being a Pod provider
• being a Solid app provider
• being a provider of developer tools to those building on Solid (i.e. ID providers, Pod providers, and Solid app providers)

@justinwb what was your drive of categorising areas of expertise? As in what problem were you looking to solve? Perhaps it was to make sure that people can only state their opinion on areas where they have appropriate knowledge?

Considering the Solid Panel is non-binding and consultative, if the areas of expertise per individual are listed then the Solid Team could take this into account when deciding. This would allow for people who have skin in the game to still voice their opinion.

Another possible mechanism could be that people in the Solid Panel (i.e. those that have skin in the game) could allocate their vote on a particular issue to another person who they feel is better prepared. That way they don't feel obliged to give their opinion on subject matter they don't feel prepared to speak on. It should be possible to retract the passing of the vote and clearly described when and how that is possible. Perhaps they could pass their vote to a person they consider more expert, that expert describes their perspective, then the person passing their vote has an opportunity to review the perspective and decide if to continue to pass their vote or to retract it and state their own opinion.

[justinwb]

As far as I can tell, there wasn't material change to the document this pull request was performed on, so I will close this pull.

However, the question that @Mitzi-Laszlo poses above about the need for organizing individual panels around an area of expertise is important, and belongs in the document itself. I will add the thought process behind why this is important, and submit it for review in a subsequent pull request.

[aschrijver]

@Mitzi-Laszlo : It's useful to have a defined group of people who have skin in the game. The question would be what defines having skin in the game?

• Being interested in Solid because one is firmly behind the vision of The Decentralized Web.