Solid CG Chair Election Procedure

[csarven]

Status: Draft. A copy of this procedure will be kept at https://github.com/w3c-cg/solid , and it will be unlocked after the announcements. The general outline of this proposal developed between the current CG Chair and W3C staff ( [email protected] and [email protected] ).

Contributions: Improvements/corrections to this proposal are welcome. Please keep feedback brief. Alternative proposals compatible with the CG charter do not belong in this discussion/document.

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The 2023-11-29 CG chair election is based on CG Charter is as follows. There are 3 open seats for co-chairs in this election.

Dates:

• 2023-11-01: Determine eligible participants.
• 2023-11-15: Chair nomination starts.
• 2023-11-29: Chair election starts.
• 2023-12-12: Chair election ends.
• 2023-12-13: Request W3C staff to tally results and anonymise data.
• 2023-mm-dd: Volunteers compute votes (based on W3C staff data) and report back to W3 Staff.
• 2023-mm-dd: Announcement and appointment.

Overview:

• W3C's WBS (Web-Based Straw-poll and balloting system) is used to gather votes.
• Only the W3C staff will be able to see the results. (This is how W3C runs AB and TAG elections.)
• W3C staff will provide the results, where candidate names have been anonymised.
• CG runs OpenSTV and computes the winner(s). CG gives back the anonymised winners to W3C staff.
• W3C staff maps the anonymised names back to real names. (At least two staff people would be involved to avoid risk of error).
• W3C staff reports the winners to the CG.

Eligible Voting Participants

• Call for volunteers (eligible voting participants) to review the eligible voting participants. Aim to have minimum 3.
• Review and verify eligible voting participants.
• On 2023-11-14, send copies and snapshot URLs to [email protected] and W3C staff with Subject "Solid CG 2023-11-29 Chair Election Eligible Voters".
• As per CG charter, affiliated participants get one vote. There is thus one eligible voter per group of affiliated participants. By default the representative from an affiliation with more than one participant is the one with the smallest user id (based on W3C API). Affiliations have the right to choose another representative in place of the default by informing the CG volunteers. Furthermore:
  • The CG gives the list of eligible voters to W3C staff ( [email protected] ) along with the request to review the WBS questionnaire.
  • The W3C staff only counts votes from people on the list.
  • The list that is used is the one the W3C staff receives no later than 12 hours before the end of the vote.

Chair Candidates

• Call for Chair Candidates opens 2023-11-15 and closes 2023-11-28.
• Candidates nominate themselves on the mailing list.
• Candidates can optionally use Matrix chat, GitHub Discussions, and CG weekly meetings to make statements and answer questions from the community. Chair candidates and voters may consider using Self-Review Questionnaire for Chair Candidates. There will be a dedicated CG weekly topic for candidates.
• Create WBS questionnaire including eligible chair candidates ( https://www.w3.org/community/solid/charter/#participation-and-voting-rights , https://www.w3.org/community/solid/charter/#chairs ).
• Message W3C staff to have a look at the WBS questionnaire.

Chair Voting

• Call for volunteers (eligible voting participants) to tally the votes. Aim to have minimum 3.
• Announce chair voting opens 2023-11-29 and closes 2023-12-12.
• Eligible voting participants vote based on CG charter criteria ( https://www.w3.org/community/solid/charter/#participation-and-voting-rights , https://www.w3.org/community/solid/charter/#chairs ).

Computing the Votes

• On 2023-12-13, message W3C staff that voting ended, and will tally the results of the election and anonymise candidate names. W3C staff to PR the blt file to w3c-cg/solid.
• On 2023-mm-dd, CG volunteers compute the votes using OpenSTV based on the provided blt file where they each provide their results w3c-cg/solid. Reuse W3C's configuration (including version/method of STV), e.g.: ./runElection.py -s 3 -r TextReport MeekSTV example.blt
• If all of the results are the same, submit results (refer to GitHub link) to W3C staff, and ask them to let the CG know who won.

Announcement and Appointment

• W3C will report the winners to the CG on [email protected].
• CG Chairs will update the chairs list and let the group know in [email protected] that everything is finalised.