First meeting of a WG allowed too soon

[frivoal]

In section 5.2.6

If known, the date of the first face-to-face meeting. The date of the first face-to-face meeting of a proposed group must not be sooner than eight weeks after the date of the proposal.

This does not leave enough time for review, AC ballot, call for participation, and so on.

This means people must make travel plans before knowing whether or when the charter is accepted, possibly despite objecting to it in case their objection is overruled.

Also, if there are indeed objections and the charter is still under negotiation when that planned meeting occurs, then we're having a meeting of a group whose scope, deliverables, work mode, chairs, etc, aren't agreed upon yet. It's unclear what the group can do in such cases. It's also unclear how we can schedule a meeting without trying to get to some degree of consensus about the time and place among the participants, and before a group is launched, it's not clear who the participants are yet. Of course there's already a core group of people driving the charter who are known, but if they meet among themselves without giving other W3C members a chance to join, that's doing a disservice to the broader Membership, and to the new WG as well by making participation hard.

If we're talking about groups who's charter is being renewed, I think that's probably allowable, as we generally know what's going to happen more or less, and a little bit of uncertainty is probably better than the disruption of cancelling / rescheduling a regular meeting.

But for new groups, it feels like this creates an incentive for "approve the charter NOW, not matter the standing objections, because we're meeting anyway". I think that's bad.

I'd delete this clause, and instead add (probably in 5.2.4) something like:

New working groups must not schedule a face-to-face meeting less than 12 weeks after the call for participation.

8 weeks is the minimum for any f2f meeting (see 3.2), so I'm putting a bit more here, 12 weeks, to give some time after the cfp for new members to join and discuss the meeting.

[plehegar]

on a quick review, forcing 12 weeks after the call for participation will be a big burden on the community imho. We have Members who come to us and are eager to start the work. It takes a minimum of a month just to get a draft of a charter in front of the AC (maximum could be 10-12 months btw). Then 6 weeks for AC review + Director decision, and we're now adding 12 weeks to that. The community will be encourage to have informal meetings if this gets too long imho.

[frivoal]

6 weeks for AC review + Director decision

But you cannot organize the trip during that time, because you don't know if the WG will be accepted or not, and in what form, and with what scope, and starting when...

If you think that 12 is too much, we can go back to the normal 8, but no matter how long the wait, the start point should be the call for participation. Before that point, the group is not confirmed, and organizing the meeting regardless is short-cutting the possibility of Formal Objections, and effectively trying to strong-arm the consortium into accepting the charter as is, because we're going to meet as if it were anyway.

I still think that more than 8 would be good. The core group of people who led the creation of the WG will be OK with a short delay, but creating a WG is an opportunity to broaden the community, and having the foundational meeting before anyone else can join seems unfortunate. That said, for me that is secondary to the other point.

[therealglazou]

I totally agree with that. To organize such a meeting (venue, lodging, travel, etc), it's too short for both the chairs and the members, in particular in terms of budget for some members. In the recent past, a proposed WG started discussing a too early meeting and its agenda while the Charter was still under vote. The meeting was scheduled to happen only a few weeks after the WG launch! Some items in the Charter were sharply discussed, and some bits of the proposed agenda were then out of scope, ahem. Legally speaking, I found it quite hard to see people discuss "as if" the WG was already there. I am therefore in total agreement with Florian when he says the start date should be the call for participation.

Furthermore, that requirement in the Process has, AFAICT, rarely - if not never - been enforced and it's a "MUST NOT". What happens if the WG does not comply? What happens to the discussions in that case? Binding or not? What's the process to complain about a 1st ftf organized too fast?

I would personnally keep the 8 weeks period FROM THE CALL TO PARTICIPATION and mention that the proceedings of the meeting will be strictly informative and will NOT be under the Patent Policy if the meeting happens less than 8 weeks after the call for participation. That should be enough to fence the whole thing...

[dwsinger]

I would be less prescriptive about the time interval and more prescriptive about satisfying the group. No meeting may be scheduled less than X if any member of the group indicates that they would be unable to attend because of the shortness of notice.

(Note that this affects those who would need to get visas, as well as air fares, and so on.) (Note also that the shortness of notice has to be the reason; simple inconvenience or conflict are not so strong, IMHO, unless the person says "I would need to reschedule my cosmetic surgery, and that's not possible at this notice" whereupon the conflict becomes a shortness of notice problem.)

[therealglazou]

No meeting may be scheduled less than X if any member of the group indicates that they would be unable to attend because of the shortness of notice.

Nice suggestion, I like it.

[frivoal]

hmmmm. I'm not too sure.

[...] if any member of the group indicates

If the call to participation hasn't happened yet, the group hasn't been created yet, and so it doesn't have members. So members cannot indicate anything.

If you add that the meeting must not be scheduled before the call to participation AND what you said, then I suppose it works

But I still think that the crucial part is to not announce the meeting before the call for participation, even if the date of the meeting is after the anticipated date of the call for participation:

• The date of the call for participation isn't known until it has happened
• The charter isn't set in stone yet, so the agenda cannot be determined
• The charter isn't set in stone, so members don't even know if they can join, on IPR grounds
• Does "unable to attend because of the shortness of notice" apply if there's been a 3 month notice, but during 2.5 of these 3 months, the charter wasn't decided? Buying plane tickets assuming the charter will start on time and will be scoped to something you like is quite a bit of risk, and waiting makes the remaining period too short. But the problem isn't "shortness of notice".

We already have a rule of "no less than 8 week notice". Making that apply counting from the date of the call to participation (the actual date, not the anticipated date) would seem OK.

[chaals]

@frivoal asked

Does "unable to attend because of the shortness of notice" apply if there's been a 3 month notice, but during 2.5 of these 3 months, the charter wasn't decided? Buying plane tickets assuming the charter will start on time and will be scoped to something you like is quite a bit of risk, and waiting makes the remaining period too short. But the problem isn't "shortness of notice".

Yes, I think that in this case there is short notice and people are entitled to request the meeting be pushed back to 8 weeks.

Given that risk, I think it would be a brave group that goes ahead to buy tickets and have the meeting - although I suppose there is a risk that it could also be a group that doesn't take the fairness requirements very seriously, and just ploughs ahead with an unofficial meeting...

[frivoal]

I think this sets up social pressure the wrong way. I don't think it is good to set up the process so that those who have concerns necessarily become framed as the trouble makers who get in the way of others. Feedback and criticism should be encouraged, not shamed.

If you're formally objecting to something in a charter with a pre-anounced meeting date, you'll get nasty looks and maybe angry calls from the group of people who have planed the meeting, blocked the date, and bought their tickets. "Are you deliberately trying to make us waste money"? Should the charter be delayed, rather than being cancelled or postponed, the pre-scheduled meeting is more likely to happen anyway and just be deemed informal until we actually get a charter, at which point the provisional resolutions will be rubber stamped. People whose participation depends on how the charter issues get resolved get excluded from the initial meeting, and pressured into going with the flow once they do join.

My intent is that by making clear that you can't schedule a meeting of a WG at all until you actually have a WG, we'd be incentivizing people to actually try harder at reaching consensus on the charter, instead of using inertia and default outcomes.

(btw, I raised this issue based on the fact that this problem has occurred, so it's not just theoretical).

[dwsinger]

OK, let's try a different way to skin this. How do we feel about groups that say that there will be an informal kick-off meeting open to anyone, that's in a short deadline? It's informal, so no decision can be made. But nonetheless those who failed to attend will be a step behind. (I ask because I think if the rules push things out, groups will try to bend the rules by saying "oh, it's not a formal meeting of the WG, just an informal get-together").

[frivoal]

I feel bad about that. It's an informal meeting, so we don't have to invite everyone, we don't have to use proper WG archived channels or post minutes, we don't have to feel bad about using tools that aren't accessible in China (google docs anyone?) to prepare the agenda... because it's not official. But nonetheless, the meeting can be used to forge strong consensus of the insiders that get to attend, and late joiner will have a very hard time fighting against a united front, should they disagree.

[jeffjaffe]

Often the first WG meeting is at TPAC. We should not make it harder to get meetings scheduled at TPAC by adding additional barriers.

[therealglazou]

@dwsinger seriously, I would consider that as "that's informal but you should really consider attending because otherwise, these first discussions will be missing forever". If it's informal, no decision, no minute taking, nothing. Who will cross the world for that ?

@jeffjaffe the first meeting of the Publishing WG has not respected the 8 weeks embargo, IIRC. Only extremely limited time to schedule a trip was left to members - implying huge cost and schedule collisions - and the meeting was decided before the end of the formal vote, IIRC again, so without knowing if the WG would even be accepted as in the proposed Charter... That was a record low. Enforcing rules is a record high. Maybe we can find something between total irrespect of the rules and strong enforcement ; something that would make Group Members feel they're Members/Contributors and also feel we don't have a Process for nothing...

[dwsinger]

@glazou indeed you touch on the "what is the or-else?" i.e. what do we do if rules are broken or skirted? We can't control people holding "out of W3C" meetings.

[fantasai]

Proposal from Florian: Change from 8 weeks from proposed charter to 8 weeks from approved charter. Concerns to address: rechartering, other existing communities.

[dwsinger]

The sense of the AB is that the time-period should be anchored on Charter Approval, not Proposal to the AC (as AC and Director approval is varying length), and consider allowing for some exceptions, including:

• re-chartering
• when TPAC is imminent and the group 'had intended to meet and it was known' at TPAC

we need to discuss who can grant the exceptions and under what conditions.

also, there are "or-elses" notably the team can reject decisions, e.g. to approve an FPWD

[chaals]

I support the proposal above, essentially it should be that only a chartered WG can issue the 8 week notice of an upcoming meeting.

This would allow for a meeting to take place if there were a recharter.

It is quite possibly worth noting that this is to ensure a fair and transparent opportunity to participate for all W3C members, so people SHOULD NOT plan an informal meeting to get around this timing restriction.

[chaals]

A proposed exception was to allow meetings to take place at TPAC with shorter notice.

To be clear, I do not support making exceptions on this basis.

If it is complicated to get a charter approved in time, there is probably more contention which suggests it is important to ensure open participation under fair conditions.

In addition TPAC already has meetings scheduled, making it harder for small participants to divert resources to a short-notice meeting.

TPAC has a specific daily cost which Working Group meetings normally don't, that can act as another disincentive.

[TzviyaSiegman]

As others have said, I don't think we need to make it harder to plan a meeting, Most WGs are chartered from incubated communities. so they now a F2F is coming. We should not get in the way of a F2F that has probably been planned long before a formal charter has passed. This will just annoy people. Why change this?

[frivoal]

It isn't unusual for member companies to condition their participation to a WG based on the terms of a charter (sometimes this is based on IPR grounds, sometimes over differences of opinion over what the WG ought to do). Even if you know a Working Group is likely to be formed, and that a meeting is likely to be organized, you cannot (affordably) make travel arrangements before knowing whether the charter is one you will be willing/able to agree to.

In addition to the practicalities of organizing travel, this also undermines consensus building. Acting as if the charter was approved before it actually is undermines the ability of people who disagree with some aspect of the charter to argue their point.

Striving for consensus means taking the time to hear people out, and making compromises. Planning meetings as if we had already agreed sends a strong signal to those who do not agree that their opinions are unlikely to be given full consideration.

[wseltzer]

The PR reflects one opinion, not consensus in this thread.

[samuelweiler]

This has been sitting with no discussion for nearly two years and no consensus evident. Propose to close?

[frivoal]

I still think the problem described in the original comment and https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/251#issuecomment-629947656 is real and worth addressing. Even if not urgent, I'd like to address it at some point. PR https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/434 hasn't got consensus (and now has merge conflicts with the latest version of the Process), so I'm fine with closing it, but I'd rather keep the issue open.