Re: About the objection to community group charter

Sure, inline

On Friday, February 7th, 2025 at 8:30 PM, Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:

> I was pretty disappointed that we weren't able to get to full consensus on the community group charter this meeting, and even more so since I may have been the source of part of the objection.
>
> Per my notes, it sounds like the objector's three primary concerns are as follows:
>
> 1. Objector's issues were not given sufficient discussion or review in this or previous meetings. I want to personally apologize for this, since it sounds like I was the one who unfairly squelched the previously raised request for cleaner commits and better commit messages. I'm sorry about this; I should have been more open to continued conversation on the issue.

Apologies, I completely missed this on the list if it went to the list.

> 2. The reasons for changing the Chair selection process from the default boilerplate in the charter template to the current process are unclear. I believe issue #32 [Method of choosing chairs in the CG Charter](https://github.com/swicg/potential-charters/issues/32) does raise the question of how to choose chairs, and I recommended adopting the boilerplate method. [PR #10](https://github.com/swicg/potential-charters/pull/10) is where the specifics are defined, and there is some conversation on that PR, but it's true that the motivation isn't given. I wonder if Juan could give some explanation of why this process is preferable, if it would overcome this objection?

Sorry, I did this in October (in one sitting, at TPAC, being interrupted often) on the assumption that if I just made everything really explicit, it would expose differences of assumption and people would open change-requests in the PR or on the list. Instead 5 months passed, we met multiple times, and I got literally pretty bored of the topic.

The affiliation stuff was nuanced for exactly the point that Melvin made: unlike most W3C CG and WG topics, "affiliation" (in the sense of dayjob) doesn't really cut it here, so I tried to add in language that would encourage transparency about non-dayjob affiliations: substantial volunteering, funding/grant flows, client relationships (I'm a self-employed freelancer so technically my dayjob is... myself!).

The multiple-chairs thing was partly just pragmatism (all the other CGs and WGs I participate in have multiple chairs, and I always encouraged multiple chairs in other open-standards contexts, i.e. when I worked at a Linux Foundation org), coupled with the "coverage requirement" we discussed on the call today. It's much easier to try to cover all the topic areas, ecosystems, and normrefs of all the CG's specs if you can spread it out over multiple chairs, than if you're trying to find a single chair who knows IndieWeb, JSON-LD, Solid, ActivityPub, and Mastodon API well enough to manage and arbitrate conflicts across all the task forces. Rather than hard-code that "coverage requirement" and make finding willing volunteer chairs an ordeal, I thought "up to 3" was a good way of striking that balance and leaving options open. Historically, there have been 3 for coverage reasons, but that "up to" was to minimize anxiety if there are gaps or volunteer shortages or availability shortages, etc.

It's been pointed out to me since the meeting that there is no way to vote for LESS THAN 3 chairs if more than 3 volunteer. It didn't occur to me that anyone would want to; at no point in my career have I ever wished there were fewer chairs in any group I participated in. PRs welcome, I suppose?

> 3. There are specifics to the Chair selection process currently in the charter that the Objector thinks are wrong. If this is the case, we probably need to list those specifics and possibly amend them

None of the above is particularly strongly-held. I was just trying to start the conversation 5 months ago by giving people a rough draft to disagree. Honestly, I expected more pushback at the time [^1]. Or on the emails I sent out in November [^2] and December [^3] inviting review and pushback...

> I think we can reach consensus on this issue, and hopefully move forward on the charter. I assume this discussion falls under the "14 days for objections" CfC period.
>
> Finally, I offered to create a separate changelog for the CG charter document; I'll try to get it finished this weekend.
>
> Evan

[^1]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2024Oct/0021.html
[^2]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2024Nov/0004.html
[^3]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2024Dec/0014.html