Common Procedures for XML Working Groups

Introduction

This document describes rules and procedures common to the Working Groups in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. Working Group charters may incorporate these rules by reference to this document; in case of conflict, rules specified in the Working Group charter take precedence over those given here. Where Working Group charter provisions supersede the provisions of this document, the Working Group charter should specifically note the difference to prevent confusion.

Group Member-only Home Page

Each Working Group has a Member-only home page which records the history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes, updated schedule of deliverables, participant list, and relevant documents and resources. It is maintained by the Team contact in collaboration with the Chair.

Decision Policy

Voting within Working Groups in the XML Activity shall follow the W3C process, with the following additional clarifications.

The approval of any question shall be by a Yes vote of two-thirds of the participants voting, provided that the Yes votes also constitute more than half of the participants in Good Standing.

Note: the XML Binary Characterization Working Group was chartered without this definition for a majority, and therefore will use a simple majority (half of the participating organizations) unless it is rechartered to conform with the policy given here. If that happens, this note will be removed.

In formal votes, normally only the whole number voting Yes, the whole number voting No, and the whole number of abstentions shall be recorded; the rationale for a No vote shall be recorded in the minutes on request of any participant voting No. However, any participant qualified to vote may, immediately following a vote, request a roll call vote; in this case, the Chair shall call upon each voting participant individually, and each person's vote shall be recorded.

Before a formal vote is taken (i.e. before or after the question is put, but before the voting result is announced by the chair), any participant eligible to vote may request that the vote take place instead by an electronic ballot (by electronic mail or other means); the Working Group Chair shall decide this question. At any time following a formal vote, up to the end of the meeting, any participant eligible to vote may request that the vote be repeated in an electronic ballot; in this case, the question of whether to repeat the vote electronically shall itself be put to a formal vote and decided according to the rules above.

In voting by electronic mail, the Working Group Chair shall publish the question to the Working Group mailing list; in voting by other electronic means (e.g. a Web-based polling system), the Working Group Chair shall publish the question to the Working Group mailing list, with pointers to the balloting system to be used. At least six days shall be allowed for votes to be cast following the publication of the question.

A question once decided by any form of formal vote becomes the status quo; editors are required to respect such decisions in preparing new drafts of any documents for which the Working Group is responsible. The status quo can only be changed by a formal vote.

Any question may be reconsidered (e.g. if new information or arguments become available), except that a motion to repeat a vote by electronic mail need not be reconsidered by the chair if the motion fails.

Substitute chair

If the Working Group Chair is unable to attend a meeting and the meeting cannot easily be rescheduled, the meeting may be chaired by a substitute chosen by the Chair from among the participants in good standing of the Working Group. If any Working Group participant registers a formal objection to this, or if the Chair could not find an acceptable substitute, the meeting must either be rescheduled or canceled.

Plenary review of documents

Before publication of any document, the originating Working Group may send it to the XML Plenary interest group for plenary review.

The plenary review period is seven days. During this time, any participant of the plenary may argue that the document should not be published. When such an objection is raised, the originating Working Group is responsible for deciding what action should be taken. Members of the plenary should not lightly object to the publication of a document; Working Groups should not lightly ignore objections to the publication.