@mnot can you elaborate on what you see as the confusion around WICG?

@dwsinger asked

can you elaborate on what you see as the confusion around WICG?

There are many people who believe that a specification, frm a W3C community group - especially one mentioned as often as WICG - is a W3C standard, whatever the reality. (I blame IETF and the very high bar for producing an Internet Standard, meaning that a "common parlance standard" - i.e. a think that everyone uses, might be a long way from formal approval. Hence things like "living standard" which might contain random ideas, or battle-tested widely accepted work, or a mixture of both...)

This was also the case with Incubator group reports before the community group process existed. And in some cases with member notes before either of those things - the "W3C date time format" was widely quoted as a "(common parlance) standard" despite having no official status beyond W3C agreeing to give it a URL and keep it online...

@mnot as far as I know the answer is "Yes, W3C believes it has the authority to create new ways of using its resources that are not part of the Process, so long as they do not violate the Process or ancillary policies that have not been lost or forgotten".

The basis would be that what is not prohibited or constrained by the process is permitted. I think that is a reasonable approach, but perhaps we should look more carefully at what extra-process procedures can make a call on W3C resources or endorsement (as CGs and BGs do, if for no other reason than that W3C hosts them on a W3C-branded website.

I think that @mnot raises an important question. The Team would be foolish to introduce processes without member review and acceptance. I believe that CGs and BGs have been discussed numerous times with the membership. The question here is how much do we want to formalize this - which is a fair question.

see also #409