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The Guidebook is the collected wisdom of the W3C Group Chairs, team contacts and other contributors.
https://www.w3.org/Guide/
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Secret polls at Business, Community, Interest, Working Groups and others to ensure all participants views are captured #159

Open jwrosewell opened 3 years ago

jwrosewell commented 3 years ago

In order to build a culture of compliance no one should feel unable to speak out, or that in the event of speaking out that they will be ignored or that their concerns will not be recorded.

Transparency is core to the W3C mission. Accordingly, those supporting changes to existing process or standards put their organizational affiliation and name associated with their submissions.

The same is not true of voting to approve or reject a change. Given allegations of bullying cited in the US House Antitrust report, one method to enable people to more freely express their opinions would be to participate via secret ballot. This would ensure enhanced focus on the substance of the issue raised rather than the biases associated with the messenger or their employer. In my experience, multiple instances of bias have been expressed against entire industries that may act to stifle the very feedback W3C so values and undermines a culture of compliance.

This would also protect members accidentally engaging in collusion by being pressured to vote in accordance with the wishes of a different company, and those who would otherwise "go along with" the proposals for fear of making difficulties with businesses that are also important trading partners.

cwilso commented 3 years ago

I'm not sure what you're suggesting, as it is already possible to make AC votes only Team-visible (i.e. they are not public).

dwsinger commented 3 years ago

This seems to be a duplicate comment; or at least, it's amenable to the same reply.

You should bring any evidence of bullying to the attention of an ombudsman; it is not acceptable.

Many formal ballots allow your response to be team-confidential, i.e. read only by the tabulators.

dwsinger commented 3 years ago

It seems that this is wider than just formal ballots, or perhaps not even mostly about them. e.g. a chair used an online poll tool (in Zoom?) that allowed the chair to assess where people felt on a question, and only totals are reported. Transfer to the team for chair training.