In order to process issues and papers more rapidly the LWG will likely split into multiple sub groups, referred to herein as sub LWG's. The number and focus of the sub LWG's is yet to be determined. The purpose of this document is to establish a process by which the decisions of the sub LWG's are likely to emulate the decisions which would have been made by the full LWG had it not split.
This paper will refer to both LWG issues (defect reports) and papers collectively as simply issues for the purposes of brevity.
The goals of this process include:
During meetings which the LWG is in session, the LWG will meet in full at the earliest opportunity each day. The purpose of the full LWG meeting will be two fold:
The desire is to have the full LWG meeting break up by the first morning break, if not earlier. Of course this will vary with the number of controversial issues.
An issue is considered controversial in a sub LWG if after a straw poll on the issue, the majority does not outnumber the minority by at least a factor of two, or if the size of the majority is less than four.
Below is a diagram of this process:
+------------------+
| Does anyone want | No +-----------+
+------------>| to discuss this |------------------>| full |
| | in full LWG? | +--->| committee |
+-----+ |Yes +------------------+ | +-----------+
| sub | +-----------------+ |Yes +------+ |Yes
issue --->| LWG |---->| 2/3 majority && | No +------>| full | +----------+
+-----+ | majority >= 4? |------------------>| LWG |--->| Approve? |
+-----------------+ +------+ +----------+
For example: Assume a sub LWG of 7 people. On issue X, 4 people vote one way (with proposed wording in hand), 2 people vote against, and 1 person fails to vote. This issue is considered uncontroversial and may automatically move to a formal motion for full committee vote (assuming the resolution of the issue requires an update to the working draft). The quorum of 4 votes for has been met. And the requirement that there be a 2/3 majority has been met. The one voter not participating has effectively reduced the size of the sub LWG from 7 to 6. There will be an opportunity for any person, whether within that sub LWG or not, to request that this issue be considered before the full LWG, prior to a formal vote before the full committee.
Sub LWG's of size 5 or more are encouraged for achieving a higher rate of issue throughput. Although sub LWG's that get too big may well miss opportunities for further parallelism.
A sub LWG of only 4 people will need a unanimous vote to be able to automatically move an issue from sub LWG to full committee.
Sub LWG's of 3 or less people will be unable to automatically move issues directly to a full committee vote. Thus these sub LWG's will be unable to make decisions in parallel with other sub LWG's. But they may still provide a valuable service by producing proposed wording where there was none, and on coming up to speed on issues so as to more quickly present the issue to the full LWG, or a larger sub LWG.
At the end of each day, each sub LWG will post the results of processing each issue so that others may review the results of the day. This will give all individuals an opportunity to decide which, if any, issues they wish to bring before the full LWG the next day. For those issues which qualify to be immediately forwarded to full committee, and for which no one indicates a desire to have discussed before the full LWG, will be included into a formal motion without further discussion at the LWG level.
Such results will be presented in a format similar to:
- 96. Vector
is not a container : Voted 5 to 2 to move from Open to NAD.- 488. rotate throws away useful information: Voted 1 to 4 to move from Open to Review.
- 612. numeric_limits::is_modulo insufficently defined: Voted 3 to 4 to move from Open to Review. Controversial.
- 652. regex_iterator and const correctness: Voted 6 to 0 to move from New to Ready. Recommend forwarding to full committee.
- 660. Missing Bitwise Operations: Voted 3 to 2 to move from New to Ready. Controversial.
- 673. unique_ptr update: Voted 4 to 2 to move from New to Review.
In this example, unless someone objects and requests a full LWG discussion on the issue which has a different outcome than the sub LWG result, the following actions will be taken:
Each issue which the sub LWG intends to be forwarded to full committee as Ready, will be tagged with "Recommend forwarding to full committee." Individuals may scan for this tag so they can more quickly and easily find issues which they want to be discussed before the full LWG immediately. Those issues which failed to be uncontroversial will also be discussed at the next full LWG meeting. Such issues will be tagged with "Controversial." Issues which were uncontroversially moved to a status which does not require full committee action (e.g. NAD or Review) will not be tagged with "Recommend forwarding to full committee." But the issue will be moved as recommended by the sub LWG unless someone requests a full LWG discussion on the issue and that discussion results in a different outcome.
The intent is for this policy to strike the right balance between enabling parallelism, enabling trust among sub LWG's, and providing sufficient transparency. And of course the ultimate goal of this policy is to deliver as high quality standard as possible in the time frame desired.