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Bug 12117 - Coordination
Summary: Coordination
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: working group Decision Policy (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Linux
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: This bug has no owner yet - up for the taking
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-02-18 16:19 UTC by Philippe Le Hegaret
Modified: 2011-06-19 22:39 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Philippe Le Hegaret 2011-02-18 16:19:36 UTC 
The editor should not make willful violations of a specification without engaging in a dialog with the relevant groups in charge of maintaining those specifications first.

W3C encourages cooperations with other groups, inside and outside W3C. If there is a technical problem with an other specification, we do expect a dialog to happen.
Comment 2 Paul Cotton 2011-02-21 23:12:43 UTC 
Maybe we should consider changing the HTML WG Decision Policy to force the escalation of any bug that involves creating a new "willful viloation" of another specification into a WG Issue in order to highlight the change and/or to encourage prior discussion with the specifications owner?
Comment 3 Maciej Stachowiak 2011-05-30 00:44:38 UTC 
My proposal for this bug would be to maintain our usual commit-then-review approach. Anyone would be able to ask for an immediate revert of a change introducing a willful violation if doing so reduces consensus. Or they could escalate the bug to an issue.

Would it be reasonable to mention this when describing the revert policy?

If no one actually objects, then I don't think we should add hoops to jump through. In particular, in a recent case where a willful violation was added, and the Chair of the relevant WG objected in strong terms, the Chairs advised him to post his comments on the public-html list and to take advantage of existing procedures. This was sufficient to resolve the issue. Although the person was upset for a while, he is presently still a member of the HTML WG and continues to participate.

Furthermore, the WG has many times fully accepted willful violations in the spec. At times when willful violations came up in the decision-making process, the WG rejected the option of removing them.  Thus, I don't see an indication that the WG itself wants to set a higher bar for these than the usual commit-then-review policy.

Therefore, I think our action here should be limited to:

(a) Highlighting the revert policy and escalation policy remedies for problems of this type.
(b) Strongly recommending that Editors and/or members of the WG pro-actively notify other WGs of conflicts of this type.
Comment 4 Sam Ruby 2011-05-30 03:11:46 UTC 
(In reply to comment #3)
> My proposal for this bug would be to maintain our usual commit-then-review
> approach. Anyone would be able to ask for an immediate revert of a change
> introducing a willful violation if doing so reduces consensus. Or they could
> escalate the bug to an issue.

I merely would suggest that you consider also integrating this with the "particularly exceptional circumstances" approach, i.e. encourage (but not require) the editor to pre-flight such changes with all available parties prior to commiting the change, with the encouragement that if such is done that the chairs will be less likely to uphold a subsequent revert request on this change.