W3C

Decision Policies

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A Working Group Charter may refer to this document. No substantive changes may be made to any decision process in this document without a W3C Advisory Committee review of the Group Charters which link to that decision process.

Comments should be sent as a GitHub issue.

Default 2022 CFC decision process §

Modifications: Charters may specify a different CFC period.

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from 5 to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

CSS 2016 decision process §

Modifications: none

This differs from default in that decisions taken at teleconferences and face to face/virtual/hybrid meetings are not considered provisional. A CFC is possible in addition, for decisions to be taken outside of meetings.

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

Decisions are made by consensus of the Working Group. In addition to decisions made on teleconferences or face to face meetings, decisions may also be made by a call for consensus on the public mailing list; consensus to be determined by the chairs after some reasonable interval for objections.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.


Chris , for the W3C Director.

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