When does a Council publish its report?

[fantasai]

Might be more of a question for the Guide, but, we ran into this situation:

1. Two FOs were received against a publication submitted for AC approval.
2. The Council deliberated and completed its Report on the two FOs.
3. Since edits were made to the document in response to AC Review, there was another consensus poll on those changes, with a closing date after the completion of the Report.
4. Another FO was filed subsequently.

By the time we got to step 3, there was already some confusion: should the Council Report be published yet, or did we need to wait for the close of the poll?

It's clear that all three FOs need to be handled by the same Council, but should a completed Report be published (and then updated if necessary), or should the Report be withheld until all steps are completed?

[npdoty]

Is there an issue documenting the process risk that someone could file endless Formal Objections on extraneous points every time a poll is conducted regarding changes to address previous objections? Have we noted that trying to address objections by suggesting changes -- when changes could and should have been developed through the consensus process instead -- leads to both extended delays and additional polls which can be abused to introduce new unrelated objections?

To the logistical question, I think Reports can and should be updated when the Council addresses different outcomes or subsequent objections, rather than being withheld.

[jyasskin]

+1 to publishing the report when the council thinks it's finished, and then updating it if something new happens as a result of the AC Review of substantive changes suggested by the report.

On the risk of endless FOs, I think it's the council's job to decide if the process is being abused in that way, in any particular case. The council always has the option of overruling the objections with no substantive changes, which ends the need to go back to the AC.

[hober]

I agree with @npdoty & @jyasskin that a Council's report ought to be published when the Council decides it's ready. It can either be updated or superseded should additional FOs come in on the same decision. (Apologies if the following sentence is extremely obvious, but) If updated or superseded, there should be some text prominently displayed at the top of the document which makes clear either what changed and why, or with a clear link to the new report that supersedes the one being read.

[nigelmegitt]

If a Council concludes with a report and a decision, and then after that a new FO comes in on the original decision, with a substantively different rationale, I'd expect a new Council to be convened, rather than the original Council to be reconvened. Then that Council would come to its own conclusions (likely taking into account the first Council's views) and publish a new report with its findings.

Is that not what others would expect?

I think this issue is more about what happens if the new FO comes in before the first Council has completed its work by publishing its report.

[fantasai]

Is that not what others would expect?

The intention was that the Council would take into consideration all of the objections together, to see if the weight of all of them should overturn the decision. That's why Councils are formed per decision, not per objection.

Pragmatically, assembling a Council is a lot of overhead, and it would be a lot less efficient to assemble a new one than to restart the old one.