Subject: [Json] A word from the Chairs

From: "Matt Miller (mamille2)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 2013 17:28:16 +0000

Welcome everyone!

The JSON WG currently has just one task in its charter: the minor revision of RFC 4627 to bring it onto the Standards Track. This is essentially a reclassification in place, with minimal changes. The WG will correct significant errors and inconsistencies, but will keep changes to a minimum.

From the earlier discussion in the BoF and on the mailing list, there is likely to be differences of opinion of what “keep changes to a minimum” means for various proposed changes. The WG chairs want to have a process that facilitates open discussion without judgement of whether or not a particular proposal meets the charter requirement too early in the process. This needs to be balanced against having the WG get bogged down in discussions of changes that few people support.

WG members can say during the discussion or during the consensus calls if they think a proposed change is outside the charter’s mandate to “keep changes to a minimum” as well as whether they think a proposed change is technically sound.

Our intention is to conduct the discussion as follows:

- WG members bring up proposed changes on the mailing list. These proposals need to include specific intended wording changes to the current-at-that-time draft, but the wording can change during the discussion. It is expected that many topics will be being discussed simultaneously.

- When the discussion of a topic has died down, the WG chairs will nudge the list for any remaining discussion.

- When that discussion has died down, the WG chairs will issue a formal call for consensus on the specific wording. The call will always have at least two choices: “leave the document as-is” and one or more sets of wording changes. The intention is that there is no discussion during the consensus call, just people stating their own opinions. There may be more than one consensus call on different topics running at the same time.

- After a consensus call that results in changes to the draft is complete, the WG chairs will ask the authors to issue a new draft quickly. This will facilitate the WG knowing what the state of the document is at any time.

- If any consensus call has fewer than five responses, the WG chairs will not consider the proposal to have consensus, and no changes to the document will be made.  WG members are free to raise the proposal again later, following the same guidelines as above.

If a WG member has proposed a change with specific wording and the WG chairs have not acted as stated above, that person should nudge the WG chairs in order to keep the discussion fresh and to have the consensus calls come close in time to the main discussion.

Thank you,

Matt Miller and Paul Hoffman