Problem statement: Currently it is very difficult if not impossible in some cases to discover from a Working Group charter:

• what were the poll results that helped create that charter?
• was there any feedback, or objections formal or otherwise?
• how was any dissent handled?
• what were the changes if any from the polled charter to the adopted charter?
• was there any follow-up repolling of poll respondents and what were the results?

This makes it difficult for W3C members, and especially difficult for newcomers to W3C, to understand the context and work that went into chartering a working group, why some things in a charter are the way they are, and a deeper understanding of how & why the working group was created.

Proposed solution: A good way to provide transparent and historically discoverable paths to these artifacts of chartering working groups would be better cross-hyperlinking/discoverability (follow-your-nose style) explicit links from, to, and between the following:

• Working Group (WG) charters (both current and all previous)
• The Advisory Committee (AC) charter WBS poll (and results) that presumably approved each charter, with perhaps also links to prior charter polls that failed.
• A brief document summarizing critical feedback (noted issues, requested changes, required (Formal Objection) changes) on each charter poll when it closed
• A thorough document explaining how each item of critical charter feedback was handled. Charter proposals need a “Disposition of comments” similar to a Candidate Recommendation (CR) that is Proposed (PR) to transition to a Recommendation.
• What precise changes (diffs) were made between a proposed (polled) and eventually adopted charter to handle each item of critical feedback
• If any such changes were made between a polled and eventually adopted charter, when were the folks who voted on the proposed charter repolled with the modified proposed charter with those changes (dated permalink to modified proposed charter as of time of repolling)
• What were the repolling responses both in aggregate (totals x for, y against, z abstain) and individually (explicit +1/-1, passive or active abstention), same granularity as the original proposed charter poll Results Page
• When/where was the repolling result announced (permalink to email)

cc: @ianbjacobs, @dontcallmedom

(Originally published at: https://tantek.com/2024/204/b1/)