In response to some questions about W3C process from the past few days, Iwould like to make available this brief FAQ.

Q. Who makes the decision within a Working Group to requestpublication of a W3C Working Draft?

A. The Working Group. The <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr#first-wd">W3C processsays:

‘The Chair MUST record the group's decision to request advancement.’

Working Groups must fulfill certain criteria before requesting publication,and as the document matures towards Recommendation, there are reviews of thepublication request to ensure that the criteria for publication have beensatisfied.

See <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html#rec-advance">section7.4 of the W3C Process Document for more information about what criteriathe Working Group must satisfy in order to advance a document on theRecommendation Track.

Q. Can a group participant stop the group from requestingpublication?

A. No.

To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs to ensure that groupsconsider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve them,whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants ofthe group or by others (e.g., another W3C group, a group in anotherorganization, or the general public).

Furthermore, per the previous question, the Chair may record a decisionwhere there is dissent so that the group may make progress. When the Chairbelieves that the Group has duly considered the legitimate concerns ofdissenters as far as is possible and reasonable, the group should move on.

A dissenter may formally request that the Director consider the dissent aspart of evaluating the related decision. This is done by raising a FormalObjection. A record of <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies#FormalObjection">eachFormal Objection must be publicly available.

Furthermore, the expectation is that the Status section of a document shouldsay when there is not consensus (see the <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#Status">Manual of Style and <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr#DocumentStatus">Processdocument for information about what is useful to include in a Statussection).

Q. For most W3C drafts, who approves the Working Group'srequest to publish?

A. The vast majority of publication requests are notdisputed, and they fall clearly within the scope of the Working Group'scharter. Although the W3C Director has responsibility for approving publicationrequests, on a day-to-day basis he delegates (see <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/organization#Team">W3CTeam) this responsibility to others on the <ahref="http://www.w3.org/People/domain?domain=Management">W3C managementTeam as described in the <ahref="http://www.w3.org/Guide/transitions">public documentation about W3Ctechnical reports. The W3C management Team escalates to the attention of theDirector when necessary.

Q. Have there been concerns raised over whether the HTMLWorking Group should publish some of the <ahref="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0262">documentscurrently under consideration?

A. Yes. Procedural concerns have been raised about whethersome of documents (HTML+RDFa, HTML Microdata, and HTML Canvas 2D Context) fallwithin the scope of the <ahref="http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter">HTML Working Groupcharter, or whether another W3C Working Group should develop them. Suchconcerns appropriately arise from time to time. In the current case, theconcerns have been raised consistent with W3C Process, including therequirement to have a public record of concerns available for review. While theconcerns are being given due consideration within the community, the W3C Staffexpects that if the Working Group requests to publish the relevant documents,the Status sections will clearly note that there is disagreement on the scopequestion.



More...