Give the Advisory Board a mission statement

[fantasai]

Tries to tie together the various roles of the AB under a coherent mission statement, similar to the TAG.

Based on discussions captured in

• https://github.com/w3c/AB-memberonly/issues/248
• https://www.w3.org/2025/03/26-ABpurpose-minutes.html
• https://www.w3.org/2025/Talks/AC/ab-wendy-reid/slides.pdf

[TallTed]

Those </li> may be optional. I do not feel that such optionality means they should always be left out. To my eye, they help keep the source coherently readable, which is important since that is where the document is edited. (So far as I'm aware, there's no user-focused editing tool for .bs documents that shows the rendered result along the way.)

[tantek]

Made a couple of optional suggestions which I think improve this section along with these edits, however will defer to editor's discretion.

Rest of it is a solid incremental improvement.

[frivoal]

About the optional </li> tags, I think this is an editorial question that should be left to the editor(s). More over, the editor(s) have documented their preference in this matter for the whole document: https://github.com/w3c/process/blob/main/index.bs#L21

[chaals]

The reason for electing an Advisory Board is to provide guidance to the Team in the areas indicated on behalf of the membership, i.e. without having to poll the entire membership. That serves the Team, in enabling them to have regular input, and the members in enabling them not to have to give it as a body so often.

I think it would be helpful if that were clarified in working out this PR.

[chaals]

Suggested change

	is elected by the Membership to advance the effectiveness of W3C as a community by:
	<ul>
	<li>Providing ongoing guidance to the Team
	is elected by the Membership to provide ongoing guidance to the Team, on behalf of the Membership,

(with subsequent markup tweaks left for the editor - I think they're obvious).

[tantek]

I think "community" was simpler and provided the AB more flexibility. This particular change to focus on "SDO", while I may have my own opinions about it (leaning toward 'can live with') feels like a big enough change that I'd rather see explicit commentary from members of the current AB in support of such a focus before adding it to this PR. Maybe consider postponing this change (community/SDO) for a separate PR?

[plehegar]

The reason for electing an Advisory Board is to provide guidance to the Team in the areas indicated on behalf of the membership, i.e. without having to poll the entire membership.

That's no longer always the case since 2023.

1. the AB acts as the Working Group to revise the W3C Process, and related documents. It is no longer guiding the Team on how to revise the Process.
2. the AB is part of W3C Councils, where Team and W3C decisions can be affirmed or overturned.

So, with the exception of those 2 cases, the AB only has a guidance role, per Process 2025.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed https://github.com/w3c/process/pull/1021.

The full IRC log of that discussion

<brent> subtopic: https://github.com//pull/1021
<brent> Github: https://github.com//pull/1021
<Ian> q+
<Ian> ack florian
<Ian> ack me
<brent> ack Ian
<Ian> Ian: Given recent work to help the community understand the respective roles of the Board and AB, I think we should revisit this text and leverage the recent efforts to clarify roles.
<brent> +1
<RRSAgent> I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2026/01/14-w3process-minutes.html TallTed

[hober]

r+ with one nit: that the discussion around line 894 and onwards gets resolved in some kind of reasonable way.

[tantek]

Thanks @hober. Yes I also agree with merging assuming the changes suggested around line 894 are incorporated as proposed, supported, and no objections in 8+ months. Leaving this as Request changes to capture that dependency. Thanks.

[brentzundel]

I am going to merge the suggestions and do an editorial pass. When I'm done I'll mark the PR as ready for review.

[tantek]

Great improvement.

[nigelmegitt]

This is subtly wrong. As I understand it the members of the AB take part in W3C Councils (if there is no reason not to) but the AB itself does not take part: it is very much not an expectation that a single AB view will be provided within the context of a Council.

This feels a bit clunky in the context of this list, but is the smallest potential fix I can think of:

Suggested change

	<li>Takes part in [=W3C Councils=] to hear and adjudicate
	<li>Provides a subset of the participants in [=W3C Councils=] to hear and adjudicate

Might be better to remove this bullet and retain the previous note that was on L894-895.

[brentzundel]

I took your suggestion to remove this point from the list. Let me know what you think.

[nigelmegitt]

Yes, that looks okay. I might have switched the order so Formal Objections comes first, or even just stopped at "take part in W3C Councils", since folk interested in those can follow the link. Thanks @brentzundel .

[chrisn]

Although I'm a Board member, I am responding as an individual, and as an AC Rep, and not on behalf of the Board.

In the interests of clarity, I suggest that the AB defines itself in its own terms, and not by its relationship to the Board of Directors.

While the AB may from time to time provide advice to the Board of Directors, that isn't its primary purpose, hence my suggestion to change to "provide ongoing guidance to W3C".

[chrisn]

Suggested change

	<li>Provides ongoing guidance to the Team and the [=Board of Directors=]
	<li>Provides ongoing guidance to W3C

[chrisn]

Suggested change

	The <dfn export lt="Advisory Board|AB">Advisory Board</dfn>
	is elected by the Membership to advance the effectiveness of W3C as a
	standards development organization (<abbr title="standards development organization">SDO</abbr>).
	The [=Advisory Board=] is distinct from the [=Board of Directors=] and has
	a distinct set of responsibilities.
	The [=Advisory Board=]:
	The <dfn export lt="Advisory Board|AB">Advisory Board</dfn>
	is elected by the Membership to advance the effectiveness of W3C as a
	standards development organization (<abbr title="standards development organization">SDO</abbr>).
	The [=Advisory Board=] has the following responsibilities: