w3c
Team-Appointed TAG Chair(s)
In the directorless branch:
Participants in the TAG chose by consensus their Chair or co-Chairs; in the absence of consensus, the Team appoints the Chair or co-Chairs of the TAG.
This seems... needlessly paternalistic. I'd very much hope that the people who put their hands up to work on the TAG are mature enough to come to consensus on who will lead their discussions, rather than having it imposed by the Team.
Can't we just drop this clause?
In the hopefully unlikely case that the TAG doesn't reach consensus reasonably efficiently I think it is reasonable to have a shortcut mechanism. One of the things that happens without a consensus is that if there apparently is no chair, there is no obvious way to decide the discussion should stop and a decision be made (since doing that is reaching consensus).
This therefore provides a forcing function - the team notes there is no consensus and appoints a chair, so any minority is going to go to the team to put their case anyway.
That said, I am not sure the clause helps much. It ignores the social reality that there is a lot of pressure to accept an incumbent or "establishment-proposed" chair, and traditionally the actual chairs have been changed by "back-room wrangling". I expect that to continue to be the reality, making the mechanics of choosing a chair somewhat artificial in any case.
That said, I am not sure the clause helps much. It ignores the social reality that there is a lot of pressure to accept an incumbent or "establishment-proposed" chair, and traditionally the actual chairs have been changed by "back-room wrangling". I expect that to continue to be the reality, making the mechanics of choosing a chair somewhat artificial in any case.
There are ways of alleviating that. For example, 3GPP says a chair may only serve a third term if they are unopposed at the election. Any other nomination invalidates their nomination.
I think we can drop the tie-breaking clause, but I don't think it is a big deal either way.
I suspect the existence of the clause makes it unlikely to be used; 'agree, or the team will step in and appoint'
I think we should keep the fallback. (And fix the typo, chose->choose "Participants in the TAG chose by consensus their Chair or co-Chairs")
Agree with @dwsinger and @chaals that we should keep this clause.
(Happy to consider ways to break chairing continuity where needed, but that's a separate issue from whether to keep this backstop, since it applies to all chaired groups within W3C.)
