Dismissal voting

[mnot]

Dismissal [...] should be used rarely in order to preserve the greatest diversity on the Council.

But later...

each dismissal is decided by simple majority of those not abstaining.

If dismissal is supposed to be so rare, why is it not a decision with a higher bar (e.g., supermajority)?

The underlying concern here is that a close vote appears more contentious / political, and might affect the legitimacy of any decisions that the resulting Council makes.

[frivoal]

With a simple majority vote, we're already finding it very rare for dismissals to happen.

Given people's voting patterns so far, moving it to some kind of super majority may well change it from rare to effectively impossible.

The point isn't that it should be hard to dismiss people, but rather than it shouldn't be that desirable. So far, the system seems to largely work as intended, not only in the rarity of actual dismissal, but if the constructive and non disruptive behavior of the people who might have been under question but that councils so chose not to dismiss.

[mnot]

We need to account for different mixes of people / motivations in the futrue -- while it's congenial now, it may not always be.

[dwsinger]

we'd need to decide which way, and how much, the scale is tipped: it takes a super-majority to dismiss, or to retain? I seem to recall that we came up with failure modes both ways?

[nigelmegitt]

Important asymmetry that makes me think we've got this very wrong:

In any other group in W3C, one objection is enough to prevent a proposal from becoming a decision, unless the Chair decides to proceed, which implies escalation to Council.

In convening a Council, one objection to the proposal that a particular Council member participates is not nearly enough. The bar is not just "lack of consensus that the individual should participate", it's much much higher in terms of votes against.

The scale should be tipped the other way. It's not only too biased in favour of Council members' participation in the face of objections, but it also reflects on the people who make the decision about where the scales should be be balanced, who are in many cases themselves Council members.

Transparent fairness should be an objective, and we fail to meet it currently. This is exacerbated by the fact that Council deliberations are held in private.

[mnot]

This is effectively a vote on who has a voice -- it's a very different thing. If the bar to disallowing someone from a Council is too low, that can be manipulated -- e.g., by a faction that wants to see a particular outcome.

Having as diverse as possible of a pool of voters is the best way to counter individual bias and motivations.

[mnot]

To make a concrete proposal: dismissal requires a supermajority.

[fantasai]

The AB resolved:

• No change to dismissal voting threshold.
• The count of votes to dismiss each participant to be disclosed in the Council Report.

[fantasai]

PR in https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/760 and annotated into the DoC; it's formally up to the Director whether to merge in this cycle. https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/snapshots/2023-05-24-doc

[css-meeting-bot]

The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed Require reporting of dismissal vote countes, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: Merge PR 760

The full IRC log of that discussion

<fantasai> Subtopic: Require reporting of dismissal vote countes
<fantasai> github: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/748
<fantasai> PR: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/760
<cwilso> q+
<fantasai> Changes: https://github.com/w3c/w3process/pull/760/files
<fantasai> florian: Still looks good to me as a month ago :)
<fantasai> cwilso: Issue filed was for something else and AB decided to do something different that sort-of touches the same spot
<florian> s/as a month/ as months/
<fantasai> cwilso: Not clear whether this resolves the issue or is a different optimization
<fantasai> cwilso: issue filer didn't ever weigh in after AB resolution
<cwilso> ack me
<fantasai> See https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/snapshots/2023-05-24-doc#issue-15A
<fantasai> 15A, 15B, 16
<fantasai> fantasai: This is covered in the DoC.
<fantasai> fantasai: I split it into sub-issues in DoC
<fantasai> fantasai: Goal of the commenters was to increase confidence in the Council
<fantasai> fantasai: we decided to do that through transparency instead of changing vote thresholds
<fantasai> florian: Did something different from what was requirements, but contradicting requests, so we did the best to address what was asked
<fantasai> cwilso: I'm OK with the change, it wasn't clear if this resolves their concern or if we think this is necessary to increase transparency
<fantasai> florian: You can't do both what Mark and what Nigel wanted :)
<florian> q+
<fantasai> fantasai: Going back up to what the commenters wanted, they wanted confidence that the dismissal process was something they could trust in
<fantasai> fantasai: in general, we've not had much dissent in the dismissal process (if at all)
<fantasai> fantasai: so showing that makes it clear to the AC how much consensus there was in the Council about its composition, and the confidence the Council has in its membership
<fantasai> florian: Regardless of whether Mark or Nigel or both are satisfied, I still think it's a good change, so we should land it
<fantasai> florian: maybe that will be enough, maybe there will be follow up, but either way let's do it
<fantasai> PROPOSAL: Merge PR 760
<TallTed> +1
<fantasai> RESOLVED: Merge PR 760