Good standing
Opened this issue · 6 comments
The new bylaws have introduced a concept of "in good standing". Every member organization is by default in good standing, but they may loose it by being overdue on paying their member dues (or for certain violations of their Member agreements, if the agreements so specify). Eventually, if the situation is not resolved, members who lost good standing might lose their membership altogether, but for at least for a while, they can stay, while in bad standing.
In the bylaws, losing good standing cause the member to lose their right to vote in board elections and other decisions taken by consortium members (such as board recalls, amending bylaws, etc…). Otherwise, their general ability to participate in W3C is unaffected.
From a Process point of view, should members who have lost good standing lose any right?
I would suggest that they can generally continue to participate normally, but lose the right to vote in AB and TAG elections, to take part in AC-Reviews, and to initiate or vote in AC-Appeals.
Given that membership is governed by the Board, presumably if members lose their membership rights that means that wherever the process says "members can..." those rights are suspended until such time as they are returned to the status of active members. I'm not sure we need to do anything here, although it would be good to point to the relevant bit of the ByLaws.
The rest seems operational, and largely in the hands of the team.
The point is that there used to be two states: either you're a member or not. Now there's 3: you can be a member in good standing, a member without good standing, or not a member. The mechanism to know which bucket you're in is defined by the bylaws, so that's clear. The question is about what happens if you're in the middle bucket.
If you're not a member, you lose all rights, and we don't need to do anything about that. But if you're a member without good standing, the bylaws make you lose some bylaws-related rights like electing the board, voting at member meetings (on bylaws revisions, board recalls…)
We don't need to do anything more, but we could. So the question is whether we should.
As I said in the opening comment, I would suggest that Members without good standing can generally continue to participate normally, but would lose the right to vote in AB and TAG elections, to take part in AC-Reviews, and to initiate or vote in AC-Appeals.
AC Reviews are non-binding (anyone can submit feedback during an AC review, and anyone can submit an FO, they just don't get a form the same way ACs do), and getting review input is useful, so I don't think there's a reason to forbid participation in AC Reviews. But if we want to align the Process and Bylaws, losing the right to vote and to initiate or vote in AC Appeals seems reasonable.
I'm tempted to say that if you are a member in bad standing you should not be able to submit feedback, but I don't feel particularly strongly about it. I can get behind fantasai's statement.
My inclination is to say that members retain rights until they're no longer members, so I'm not sure we need to do anything.
Which ever way we decide, I don't think this is going to make a huge difference. Hopefully there's not going to be a lot of members in bad standing at any given time, so the impact is likely to be small.
Still, here are a few arguments for doing some things in the Process in response to members losing good standing:
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The bylaws already establish that members without good standing cannot vote for the board. I think it is very confusing if they can still vote for the AB and the TAG when they cannot vote for the board, and at minimum, I think we should align that.
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AC appeals are rare, but they're final. Having questions that cannot be further appealed be decided through a vote which includes members who're so far being on their payments (or in sufficient violation of their agreements) that they have lost their voting rights at the corporate level makes me uneasy.
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The rules of AC-appeals have a rule with a 5% threshold. If we're just under the threshold when counting all members, but would be over the threshold if we only counted members in good standing, I am not sure that I like that proposals can be defeated due to members in bad standing failing to vote. (The same applies to requesting REC obsoletion, btw: https://www.w3.org/policies/process/#deactivation)