W3C updates its Process Document

The W3C Membership approved the 2025 W3C Process Document, which takes effect today, 18 August 2025.

Major changes:

• Removing the Proposed Recommendation phase of the Recommendation track, and applying the Advisory Committee (AC) Review instead directly to the Candidate Recommendation. This maintains the qualifications for Recommendation while reducing administrative steps.
• Introducing a new Charter Refinement phase to formalize the issue-tracking and decision-making of our currently informal review phase prior to Member Review (AC Review) of a charter. The goals of this new phase are to:
  • Reduce the number of Formal Objections raised during AC Review that could have been avoided by solving small problems earlier and developing consensus on larger ones through dialog.
  • Ensuring that comments get addressed, and not ignored, by those developing the charter.
  • Making the chartering process more understandable, and therefore easier to participate in.

Other significant changes:

• Requiring higher vote thresholds for low-participation AC Appeal votes by adopting the thresholds from the W3C Bylaws.
• Applying the Bylaws concept of Good Standing to AC votes (AB and TAG elections and AC Appeals only; not AC Reviews, which are technically not votes).
• Clarifying the differences between major (AC-approved) and minor (Team-approved) amendments to a charter, as requested by the PSIG.
• Fine-tuning various details of the W3C Council process.
• Simplifying the Member Submissions section.

You can read more about all changes since the 3 November 2023 Process Document, or peruse the diff.

This document is developed by the Advisory Board’s Process Task Force working within the W3C Process Community Group (which anyone can join). Comments and feedback on the new Process Document may be sent as issues in the public GitHub Repository.