My personal view here is going to be slightly nuanced, but with a few hard lines. To wit:
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Under absolutely no circumstances should a decision be made based off of a vote on a poll on the fediverse. That is entirely too easy to game.
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Similarly, having as a voting body just “members of SocialHub” is not a great criterion.
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Some mechanism of removal is, however, essential. As is some form of gatekeeping. Otherwise someone is going to produce the “Klan Guide to the Fediverse” and publish as a FEP.
Getting into the nuance:
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In general, I actually don’t know that I consider the w3 or how they may or may not behave with respect to this as relevant.
It doesn’t offend me particularly to leave it in there, but I also don’t feel we actually have any value by adding it as a step in this. If this is meant our process, let’s own it, and if we want the w3 to adopt something we can go yell at them to adopt whatever it is. One mechanism there could very well be writing an FEP and then talking with them about getting it adopted, and I would even encourage that as a direction, but we can call them different standards with different goals and criterion.
Basically: FEPs are one way to gain consensus as a way to push a proposal to the w3. But this shouldn’t be considered “the w3 cherry picks what they want from this list,” but rather “it doesn’t matter what the w3 wants to do, we have this list and sometimes it is useful to demonstrate we already have consensus and implementations when making a case.”
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The basic “may work well enough” version is to simply have a Code of Conduct and a set of requirements and let volunteers enforce those requirements. This does not solve the malfeasance concerns that people have (and, as with worldcon, those are significant) but it does mean (as with worldcon) that it “works well enough in the average case.”
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I think it’s worth aligning on what we think of the FEP process just in general. Is it meant to be a set of “recommended / best practices” or is it meant to be “this is a mechanism for gaining consensus and disseminating ideas/information” or is it meant to be “this is a way of putting together a formal proposal for the w3, with an escalator that eventually terminates at the level of the w3”? I don’t view these as wholly compatible goals. I don’t think any of those three are bad, but I do see them as different.
Basically, if I hand someone a FINAL FEP what should their takeaway be? That this is a best practice? That this is a stable proposal for implementing a pattern, but one that’s narrow, specialized, or may not be widely used? That this is a guide for some aspect with some stability and that has met some set of requirements, but not that anyone is currently implementing it? That this is on an escalator and that the next stop is the w3?
I guess my point ultimately would be it can be any of these things, but it can’t be all of them. So what would the most value be?