One thing I notice about the charter is that appeals to the steering committee, while appropriately limited to exceptional circumstances, may only be submitted by a working group member.

There is something analogous to such appeals in the W3C process. There, appeals to a WG action go to the W3C Director who submits them to two groups: the Technical Architecture Group and the Advisory Board. They, in turn, make recommendations back to the director who then acts on the appeal (called an "objection" in W3C-land).

There are two differences from Scheme.

First, the Scheme world lacks a Technical Architecture Group and lacks an Advisory Board. Not much to do about that, although in some sense - in the smaller Scheme world - the Steering committee itself natively embodies both of those roles.

Second, objections in W3C-land may come from *anyone*, including those not recognized as a member of a working group.

I think that the reason objections are permitted from *anyone* is that in these matters, working group membership and participation is limited politically, by economic factors, and timing of awareness of potential participants -- yet the value of a good objection can be purely on the basis of its contents with no regard to its origin.

I suggest, on the basis of the W3C example, that the steering committee be willing to hear appeals from *anyone*.

This suggestion is not meant to imply that the steering committee should spend an unbounded amount of time processing appeals. The bar on appeals should be fairly high and that includes an expectation that appeals - from any source - are well and concisely presented.

The suggestion *is* meant to avoid a bug that seems to come up in processes like these. The best intentioned and even quite smart of groups (such as a working group) easily becomes myopic to come externally lodged observation or complaint. For any reason they can easily slip up and fail to produce a WG sponsor to carry some proposed appeal from an outsider to the steering committee.

Unless we would expect a *flood* of outsider appeals I don't see how this change would add much burden to the steering committee's work. I don't see any harm in making this change to the charter. I do see *possible* advantage to it for the goal of yielding higher quality Scheme standards.

-t