Hi, Bijan-
Bijan Parsia wrote (on 2/25/09 9:57 AM):
Hello,
I think it could improve both the perceived and actual transparency and
accountability of the W3C as a whole to have what I've tentatively
called an "Audit Board". An Audit Board would be charged with
investigating specific incidents and situations and producing a report
and making recommendations. A key aspect would be clearly documenting
facts to produce a common base of verifiable information that people can
make judgments on.
I would hope that such a group would help mitigate some of the heat that
arises as people involved in a FAIL situation recount what happened,
esp. to make a new point. It would also provide a body of knowledge that
e.g., chairs could draw on when coping with issues that arise in WGs.
There is a concern that such a group could either be a witch hunter's
club, or be systematically unfair to certain people or positions. I
can't really say anything against those concerns. No rule can rule out
bad acting.
Even if not a board, some sort of report repository wherein things like
Formal Objections can be gathered and analyzed would be, imho, helpful.
At the moment there is a sea of data at the W3C about its history, but
you have to do difficult and dedicated research to ferret it out. Some
of it is hidden from the public and some of it is hidden from the
members, which makes things even trickier.
I think this is an interesting idea. I would extend it past FAIL
situations, and proactively have it be able to reality check events like
contentious Last Call situations where there is a potential Distributed
Denial of Spec attack. There are cases where cooler heads from outside
the fray might be able to arbitrate a reasonable position, in a public
forum, and record why particular decisions were made.
Right now, the chair of a WG is tasked with deciding when an objection
should be overruled; having public oversight on that strikes me as a
good balance of power, and can call into question or justify a chair's
decision, for the good of the W3C/Web Standards community as a whole.
Like you, I do see some risks in such an arrangement, but it's would be
more useful to discuss them as we drill into details.
Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs
