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Chair appointments
The director-free branch currently has the Team appointing WG chairs, but there isn't a clear mechanism for disputes; the FO process does not apply to these decisions, as I read it.
Should there be a process for disputing a Team decision like this?
First raised in #316.
I believe there is a path already:
- The Process does not limit the types of decisions that can be formally objected to, so I see no reason why you couldn't Formally Object to chairing appointments / changes / reappointment / removals
- Initial appointment of chairs is done via charter creation / adoption, and these are subject to AC reviews, which clearly people can formally object to.
- Says https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#cfp “Advisory Committee representatives may initiate an Advisory Committee Appeal against the decision to create or substantially modify a Working Group”. Changing a chair is a substantial modification of a working group.
All in all, these are fairly heavy handed approaches, and I suspect that for personnel issues, expressing concerns in private to the Team is most effective, but if that fails, there are appeal paths.
We could discuss whether these mechanisms are ideal, but by my read, we do have the ability to dispute such decisions, so I don't see that as a pressing issue.
I would not like to see FO used, but as I read it, anyone can FO any decision, and an appointment is surely a decision. Why do you think FO is not available? (I agree with Florian, I hope it can be resolved without such a heavy tool.)
@mnot Are the responses from @dwsinger and I above sufficient to address you concern, or do you think we need to do something else?
I read section 5.1 as constraining the types of decisions that can use the FO mechanism defined in section 5.5 to 'chair decisions', 'group decisions' and 'W3C decisions', the latter being defined as:
determined by the Team on behalf of the W3C community by assessing the consensus of the W3C Community after an Advisory Committee review.
Since there is no AC review of the Team's appointment of a chair, this action doesn't seem to meet the 'after an AC review' qualification.
If the intent is to allow any decision to be formally objected to, we should either state that explicitly (perhaps by defining a fourth category of decision -- "Team Decision", perhaps?), or removing that qualification and the qualification regarding assessment of consensus from the definition of 'W3C decisions'.
The sentence beginning section 5 probably needs to be modified or moved; currently it only addresses one kind of decision, and implicitly, which could be confusing to readers:
Individuals who disagree strongly with a decision should register with the Chair any Formal Objections.
@mnot I read it that way too. There seems to be a grey area where something that would ordinarily be called a decision is being made, but there's no group with a Chair: the presence of a Chair seems to be the common factor in §5.1 - even with a W3C Decision, where a Chair is not directly mentioned, there is one by implication since the AC has a Chair (who is currently a member of the team too).
Perhaps the second sentence of §5, as flagged by @mnot, could be rephrased to (hopefully clearer, though rather longer) —
Individuals who disagree strongly with a decision SHOULD register any Formal Objections with the applicable Chair (for Working Group, Interest Group, or Advisory Committee decisions) or the CEO (for Team decisions).
(Even if the above is not adopted, I would still strongly advise swapping the order of "any Formal Objections" and "with the Chair", to the more common American English phrase order.)
section 5.1 wasn't meant to be exhaustive, just to give easily referenced names to certain common types of decisions. No implications that other decisions weren't Decisions was implied.
I guess we could do either or both of:
- starting that section with something like "Common types of decisions include"
- Linking to the definition of Team decision or moving it here.
Best be explicit. 5.5 starts:
In the W3C process, any individual may appeal a decision by registering a Formal Objection with the Team when they believe that their concerns are not being duly considered.
This has a lot of words that are doing little work, without really addressing what a FO is and when it happens. How about:
Any individual (regardless of whether they are associated with a Member) can appeal any decision (including both those described in Section 5.1 and other decisions made as part of this Process, such as Team decisions) by registering a Formal Objection with the Team.
Q: is there any reason we can’t include this in the 2022 batch?
It is meant for inclusion in the current batch, which is the 2023 batch, as Q1 2023 is when we expect to be wrapping up. There is no 2022 batch, because we're taking a little bit over a year to complete this cycle.
(As a clarification, I renamed the P2022 tag to P2023 yesterday for this reason.)
The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed Clarify what can be formally objected to, and agreed to the following:
RESOLVED: Merge 674 and close 652
The full IRC log of that discussion
<fantasai> Subtopic: Clarify what can be formally objected to<fantasai> github: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/652
<fantasai> florian: Some background on this
<fantasai> florian: The issue here is caused by editorial refactorings
<fantasai> s/florian:/...
<fantasai> ... The Process before last year, types of decisions were described all over the place
<fantasai> ... we refactored everything about this to be more sensible
<plh> --> https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/674 pull request
<fantasai> ... and now we have a section that describes types of decisions
<fantasai> ... mostly text pulled from elsewhere
<fantasai> ... Then we have formal objections saying that you can object to decisions
<fantasai> ... and it *seems* like the only types of decisions that can be objected to are the ones in that section
<fantasai> ... but Team Decisions were defined elsewhere
<fantasai> ... so this moves that, and gets it organized, and tweaks the phrasing a bit to be more clear
<fantasai> ... to make it clearer that all types of decisions can be objected to
<fantasai> -> https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/674/files
<fantasai> plh: How does it help with the question of chair appointments?
<fantasai> florian: Appointing a chair after chartering is a Team Decision o
<fantasai> ... there was a complaint that there's nothing you can do to appeal that decision, but actually you can, because Team Decisions can be objected to
<fantasai> ... Now that's a bit blunt, and ideally you want to handle without a formal objection
<fantasai> ... but that path is available as apeal
<fantasai> ... so that's how this PR deals with this issue
<fantasai> s/apeal/appeal/
<fantasai> plh: ...
<fantasai> florian: First you should of course talk to the Team, to see if it can be resolved amicably
<fantasai> ... but formal objection is possible if that doesn't work out
<plh> [[
<plh> Advisory Committee representatives may initiate an Advisory Committee Appeal against a Team decision regarding the extension of a Working Group or Interest Group charter.
<plh> ]]
<plh> https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#charter-extension
<fantasai> plh: FO is about decisions about to be made, appeal is about retroactive
<fantasai> fantasai: not quite, we refactored the objections process, since they were identical, we folded the concepts together and called FO (more common name)
<fantasai> florian: [missed, something about FOs also being able to apply to past decisions sometimes?]
<plh> q?
<fantasai> florian: I think this is a clarification, doesn't introduce anything new
<fantasai> plh: Proposal to merge PR 674, any objections?
<fantasai> RESOLVED: Merge 674 and close 652
