Drop wide review of charters from the Process

[frivoal]

It's been suggested that this could be left to the guide. This PR implements that possible change.

Personally, I'm not convinced, and I think it is worth hard-coding this expectation into the Process, but I'm offering the PR to anchor discussion of that aspect.

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[ianbjacobs]

Here is my thinking behind this:

• This is already happening today (via the Guide).
• If this is already happening today, and there are concerns about Member engagement, etc., then it is not obvious to me that those concerns would be addressed by moving something that is working as-is into the Process.
• In summary, if it ain't broke and it ain't the source of issues...

[fantasai]

I'm a -1 to this change. We are clear about wide review for our specs, I don't see why we shouldn't be clear about wide review of our charters. Also this is one of the main goals of having a Charter Refinement phase (whether we formalize it or not) so I think it's an important aspect of describing it in the Process.

[tantek]

I am a +1 to this change. Having recently led a wide-review (which I think was the right thing to do), I must acknowledge it takes time, and we should be more flexible for this initial "charter refinement" feature to allow us to use human judgment (guide) and experiment and learn. It's premature to make this kind of requirement on a new Process feature which is completely handled informally currently.

[chaals]

I think this change is not a good idea. There has been an expectation of this for many years, and many discussions about how chartering is an important place to be looking at scope. Often these are explaining things that people are unhappy about later, so it seems worthwhile clarifying in advance.

[nigelmegitt]

For completeness, this change would need to be expanded to remove "widely reviewed" from line 1729.

[nigelmegitt]

Perhaps it should be theoretically possible for W3C to charter a group without wide review (I have not come to my own conclusion about that yet), but in that case, it surely should not be possible to avoid horizontal review of the proposed charter.

The minimum change that might therefore be acceptable would be to change "wide review" to "horizontal review", rather than removing the provision altogether.

[ianbjacobs]

"Wide review" is in the guide today and it works well.

[plehegar]

wide review is a core value of the consortium. while I agree that it could be moved in the guide, emphasizing this in the process is valuable imho.

[TallTed]

Sometimes it's good to say similar or identical things in multiple places. I think it is not problematic to include mention of wide review in both Guide and Process documents. Lacking a strong reason to remove it from the Process, i would leave it in both.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed Dropping wide review from Charter REfinement, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: Reject PR #1001

The full IRC log of that discussion

<fantasai> Subtopic: Dropping wide review from Charter REfinement
<fantasai> github: https://github.com//pull/1001
<fantasai> plh: I'm uncomfortable dropping this.
<fantasai> ... I agree we'll do it nevertheless, but it is a core value of our process.
<fantasai> ... people come to W3C because of wide review
<fantasai> ... I would keep it there to emphasize this value
<plh> ack fantasai
<florian> q+
<fantasai> fantasai: +1 to everything
<fantasai> ... if something is a core value, and we would be upset if we didn't do them, they belong in the Process
<fantasai> florian: I am also reluctant to remove this
<fantasai> florian: Extra motivation Ian mentioned was that, in an earlier iteration from this we insisted more that the facilitator is in charge, and at end of Process we have Team Verification. Under that framework, needed to mention wide review so that Team verifies it.
<fantasai> ... but the Team is in charge in general, so might not be necessary to verify what the Team does
<fantasai> florian: That said, personally, I'd rather keep it
<fantasai> plh: still think we should keep it
<fantasai> plh: Tantek is mentioning flexibility, and we have flexibility built into concept of wide review
<fantasai> ... but it would be bad to not have wide review
<florian> q?
<plh> ack fantasai
<Zakim> fantasai, you wanted to contest that logic
<cwilso> +1 plh
<fantasai> fantasai: Even if a Team member is facilitator, having Team verification is not redundant. Team checking other Team's work is still valuable, so this is not redundant.
<fantasai> florian: So proposed to reject this PR
<fantasai> plh: Yes.
<cwilso> +1
<fantasai> RESOLVED: Reject PR #1001