Skip to content

Give the Advisory Board a mission statement #1021

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Draft
wants to merge 3 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Draft

Give the Advisory Board a mission statement #1021

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
3 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
1ec310e
Give the Advisory Board a mission statement
fantasai Apr 10, 2025
6b4eee0
grammar
frivoal May 1, 2025
932d733
community -> SDO
fantasai Aug 11, 2025
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
23 changes: 13 additions & 10 deletions index.bs
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -872,27 +872,30 @@ Advisory Board (AB)</h4>
<h5 id=ab-role>
Role of the Advisory Board</h5>

The <dfn export lt="Advisory Board|AB">Advisory Board</dfn> provides ongoing guidance to the Team
The <dfn export lt="Advisory Board|AB">Advisory Board</dfn>
is elected by the Membership to advance the effectiveness of W3C as a standards development organization (<abbr title="standards development organization">SDO</abbr>) by:

<ul>
<li>Providing ongoing guidance to the Team
on issues of strategy,
management,
legal matters,
process,
community engagement,
and conflict resolution.
The Advisory Board also serves the Members
<li>Serving the Members
by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings,
soliciting Member comments on such issues,
and proposing actions to resolve these issues.
The Advisory Board manages the <a href="#GAProcess">evolution of the Process Document</a>.
As part of a [=W3C Council=],
members of the [=Advisory Board=] hear and adjudicate on [=Submission Appeals=]
and [=Formal Objections=].
<li>Managing the <a href="#GAProcess">evolution of the Process Document</a>.
Copy link
Contributor

@nigelmegitt nigelmegitt Apr 15, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I thought the role was stronger than this with respect to the process?

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view

Copy link
Collaborator

@frivoal frivoal Apr 16, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I thought the role was stronger than this with respect to the process?

In what sense?

This comment was marked as resolved.

Sign in to view

</ul>

The [=Advisory Board=] is distinct from the [=Board of Directors=]
and has no decision-making authority within W3C;
and has no decision-making authority over W3C;
Copy link
Contributor

@tantek tantek Apr 15, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
and has no decision-making authority over W3C;
and has no decision-making authority over W3C.

Punctuation consistent with the prior suggestion.

its role is strictly advisory.
Copy link
Contributor

@tantek tantek Apr 15, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Suggested change
its role is strictly advisory.

Given the AB's role in managing the Process document (and now also The Vision, and facilitating the Code of Conduct, which can be a separate PR), and FO Councils, it's high time to remove this legacy phrase which causes more confusion than clarity in practice.

Copy link
Collaborator

@frivoal frivoal Apr 16, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I am cautiously in favor of this proposed removal. Removing this sentence does not cause the AB to gain any decision power it does not otherwise have, so this seems to be a safe change, and "strictly" hasn't really been true, so this is a likely source of confusion.

Copy link
Member

@plehegar plehegar Oct 17, 2025

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

In fact, I don't believe that sentence is correct anymore. The Process says: "Revision of the W3C Process and related documents (see below) undergoes similar consensus-building processes as for technical reports, with the Advisory Board acting as the sponsoring Working Group.".

So, the AB does have decision powers, similar to Working Groups. Both are subject to AC Reviews.


Note: While the [=AB=] as such does not have decision-making authority,
its members do when sitting as part of a [=W3C Council=].
However, as part of a [=W3C Council=],
members of the [=Advisory Board=] hear and adjudicate [=Submission Appeals=]
and [=Formal Objections=].

Details about the Advisory Board
(e.g., the list of Advisory Board participants,
Expand Down