External facilitation

[jwrosewell]

Many of the current 90+ outstanding issues have been open for some time. The W3C should appoint dedicated resources or external facilitation to produce a set of revised processes comparable with other organisations governing similarly essential technology resources and ensuring they operate for only legitimate purposes. This will also be an opportunity to ensure complaince with the recently revised US Department of Justice Guidance and EU guidance materials.

[dwsinger]

We progress issues based on volunteer effort and time; many are languishing because there isn't a specific change proposed, or that no-one (including the original filer) feels it is worth spending time on.

If you are aware of specific legal material that you think would suggest a specific change to the Process document, please bring it to the attention of W3C counsel.

[jwrosewell]

This is a broader issue than just the Process CG. W3C is undertaking a significant change which seems to involve incorporation as a new legal entity, changes to the membership agreement and refreshing policies such as antitrust. The W3C supports technical standards setting in a multiple trillion dollar market where individual participants themselves are worth in excess of a trillion dollars. A lot has changed since the first version of these documents were published and used.

In this issue I'm suggesting external facilitation is used to expedite the work of volunteers. As such there is not a specific change to the process document.

In any case I observe a lot of time is consumed in debates. During the Process CG meeting on 6th January I joined 1/2 hour into the meeting. The 1/2 hour I was present for involved a debate about the hosting of registries and chairs choices. This is a specific implementation detail which I would prefer to see delegated to the W3C Team to produce recommendation for the requirement. The W3C Team would then report back stating there are three options with pros and cons and the Process CG then decides from those options.

@dwsinger I've no objection to you closing this issue if you feel it is not relevant. It's more of an observation on efficiency that may be better progressed by readers who are members of the AB.

[jeffjaffe]

In any case I observe a lot of time is consumed in debates. During the Process CG meeting on 6th January I joined 1/2 hour into the meeting. The 1/2 hour I was present for involved a debate about the hosting of registries and chairs choices. This is a specific implementation detail which I would prefer to see delegated to the W3C Team to produce recommendation for the requirement. The W3C Team would then report back stating there are three options with pros and cons and the Process CG then decides from those options.

It is critical that the broad W3C Community is empowered to work on implementation details. That is why the work proceeds in a Community Group.

[jwrosewell]

Maybe we can expedite closure of some of these Process issues with some external facilitation? i.e. an external reviews and presents 3 options for group to consider. If there is no appetite to do this then please close this issue.

[frivoal]

I have no principled opposition to this, but I am very skeptical that it would work:

• Finding people who know enough about the w3c process and associated politics to make sensible change proposals who are not either already part of this group or too busy to be part of this group is going to be a challenge
• The hard part is sometimes on making the proposal, but much more often it is on reaching consensus that proposals are good, and that part cannot really be outsourced

[cwilso]

I am unclear why those people wouldn't simply join the Process CG to do that work if they were motivated. As @frivoal says, the hard work is in building actual consensus on solutions. At the end of the day, of course, the Advisory Committee (all of the W3C Members) are responsible for approving any changes.

[dwsinger]

I think that the observation was on the task of simplifying the process document. It'll probably take someone a serious amount of time to read it, analyze it, and suggest both small-scale improvements (places that can be phrased more clearly and/or succinctly) and large-scale (re-organization to make it easier to follow and more maintainable). Do any of us have the time that we can prioritize to do this?

[frivoal]

I suspect a few sentences could be rewritten to reduce the word count slightly by someone who only knows good grammar and nothing about W3C. But I also think such changes are largely uninteresting. Removing ambiguities, getting rid of unnecessary complexity of or unused provisions, that's where the actual meaningful simplifications are. And for those, you know more than mastery of the English language, and you need to know W3C politics.

[jwrosewell]

This issue relates to the group chairs and editors making use of external support. As this isn't an issue that impacts me directly and we've debated it I'll close it. I do observe that we don't separate out "decision making" from "doing" particularly well which might put people off getting more involved, but that isn't an issue for Process CG specifically.