require every W3C working group has a member of the public with no expertise.

to ensure the group explains their work in plain English.

which is helpful to everyone.

They are also in a better position to contribute to your suggestion.

I’d also like this group to include people with a range of intellectual ability.

20% of the population of the UK are functionally illiterate.
Currently for obvious reasons, they don’t use the web in the main.

the web will engage these people when W3C understands what the issues are.

example of how things might develop in practice:
a return to RAD of web authoring tools, along the lines of
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/
or
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=604309&aid=1081266&group_id=93438

including summaries of pages, this example being the BBC homepage:
http://www.peepo.co.uk/mybbc/index.html
how this might be achieved:
http://www.peepo.co.uk/mybbc/hints.html

this is particularly pertinent to web2.0 and ARIA:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-aria-roadmap-20060926/

[ Yep, it landed in the spam queue. I found it and brought it back out. -E. ]

How about favorizing groups and projects that actually contribute something?

Standards work is always contentious and about compromise between different interested parties, and finding the right organization to mediate between everyone (including commercial interests, who represent valid sets of constituents, including themselves and their body of customers) is tricky. If you haven’t read it already, the blog entry More W3C controversy that Eric linked to has one illuminating look at how the W3C operates.

To me, it is no wonder that there is a lack of morale and a pandering to special interests – at least standards in those niche areas might get implemented.

I predict that as long as Internet Explorer is the dominant browser the W3C’s perceived effectiveness will be determined by Microsoft.

Does any of this ring true?

Anyways, it doesn’t invalidate improving the current organization / protocols.

At any rate, It still boils down to the willing-ness of the rest of the WG. If, right now, certain members aren’t involved enough with their communities to effect their work at the WG, or to properly consider the ideas they read, why would they change with the event of adding a WGO? I suppose your point on only affecting bad WGs applies again here, but how many WGs are bad? Is there any real solution to solving the problem of a bad WG, other than disbanding it?

“every Working Group should have one member whose primary (and possibly sole) responsibility is outreach.”

Hear, hear! Working on a big MIL-SPEC avionics R&D project I stole a page from a venerable old (WWII vintage) electronics company and created the “Integrated Logistics Group”. Yes, “catch-all”, indeed. Point is that we were tasked with acting as advocate for the end users. That tied in very well with my chore of nailing jello to the wall keeping the doc set in sync with what was actually happening on the floor.

IMNSHO the answer to “Who watches is watchers” is “The stakeholders”. When those who do *tip of the hat* disconnect from those who legislate, well …

I admit there would be fine lines to walk sometimes, but hey, there are sometimes WG discussions that are totally off the record, not even appearing in the minutes. Those would obviously also not go into the summary.

Michael: you raise good points, though I think they’re easily addressed. First, I would have existing groups add a WGO, not reassign one of their existing members to the role. Second, a WGO could be an Invited Expert; that is, someone who doesn’t have to pay the membership fee to join. (Most WGs have Invited Experts; I was one for seven years.)

I also don’t propose that the WGO be the only point of contact between a WG and the public. I do think there should be one person dedicated to that task, but they would only accrue disproportionate power in bad WGs—that is, WGs where none of the members interact with the community. In good WGs, the WGO would serve to focus the WG’s attention on things they’ve already seen in the community, and get the WG’s responses to those things. The presence of a WGO might also spur the WG members to spend more time in the community than they otherwise would.

How the WGO presents the community’s interests would be up to each WGO. There’s just no other way to manage that. A good WGO would present all ideas and common requests, not just those he liked. Furthermore, I don’t think the WGO has to convince the WG that an idea is good or bad. He just needs to put the idea in front of the WG, so they can collectively consider it. I’d expect him to take part in the discussion, of course.

For instance, currently, one of the major annoyances that many people have with the W3C, is that it takes a long time to get anything done. Removing one member from each WG, to become a WGO, is lessening the workforce. Also, for his position to be effective, it would be necessary to give him time to write up an acceptable summary, and give time for well-considered responses from the public. The WG would need to wait for this feedback, before moving onto the next stage of their task.

Also, Im worried about what the WGO post would become. The WGO would have a large level of power, in that he decides what each side (the WG, and the public) hears. Eg. If an idea takes root on the internet, and gets a reasonable following, he has the power to kill that idea off, by simply never reporting it to the rest of his WG.

That becomes a problem when you consider the type of job that a WGO is. In theory, it may seem that he is a part of the WG, but really, he is more of a “mailman.” He simply takes what one side says, delivers it to the other, then waits to take back a reply. After paying to be a part of the W3C, who would want to take up this post? It would be far more interesting to actually have a real say in the decisions of the WG.

Finally, when meeting with the WG, how does the WGO present the opinions of the public? Those opinions are always so varied, and so numerous, that it may be troublesome at best. And if he does not agree with the opinions he is being forced to express, then it is likely he will be a lot less enthusiastic/convincing as he would be when he was presenting an idea which he actually believed in.

What is your take on these problems? Or do you feel they would only be minor problems, at most?

Overall, I personally believe that what is needed is half of a WGO, ie. a one-way communicator. That is, the WGO should post summaries of events to the public. However, he should not be considered as the WG’s main way of hearing from the public. Any member of a WG should be enthusiastic about their task, and so, should, voluntarily, be reading public opinions on the internet anyway. All of the WG members, should themselves be fully aware of public opinion, develop their own opinions on different issues, and then bring these to the WG meeting room.

This way, WG members become a part of the public, which is ultimately, the perfect solution. Otherwise, the WG members will remain as distant as ever from the real people, and be much less effective because of that.

I’d like to see more invited experts on working groups, more “official” blogging by WG members, and I’ll bring up the idea of a WGO for CSS at our next F2F.

Outreach usually concerns those who directly tend to the individuals in a community who are in need, not one that takes what it learns back to its employers. Your typical prison outreach program helps inmates, but it isn’t responsible for changing the penal system based on its experiences. Since outreach is about serving an audience more than acting as a go-between of groups, I’m not sure about this usage either. Having a W3C role strictly for outreach would be great, but as for within WGs… What this does sound like is a PR role.

But that term is taken, with all its own connotations, so how about something like Working Group Liaison? I’d say WG Community Liaison, but from the sounds of what you’re saying, the job of the Liaison is to develop communication between the WG and not only the community-at-large, but other working groups and implementors as well.

Just one idea of what I’m sure will be many.