Right now the Process is pretty lax about how charters are initiated. Conceivably, a charter could be worked on for a week or two and then go to the AC without anyone outside a limited subset of the community being any wiser.

While in some aspects that's great, if we want broad review of charters to assure that there's strong consensus on them and that they align with values, we should make sure that they get broad review, and people who might have feedback have adequate chance to do so.

Some proposals:

• A new term, charter under consideration be introduced to the process. While a charter can be under development privately, once it's under consideration it is acknowledged that the W3C is considering adoption of the charter and commencing discussion and evaluation of it.
• Charters under consideration are announced to the entire community (e.g., using an e-mail list + RSS feed + web page), not just the AC.
• A community-wide venue be established for discussion of charters under consideration. Probably a GitHub repo, maybe a mailing list. Needs to be a community space, not a Team-oriented tracking mechanism like the strategy funnel.
• There is a minimum limit on the time a charter is under consideration baked into the process, to allow ample notice and time for discussion inside the W3C as well as with any external stakeholders. I'd suggest four weeks.
• Horizontal review be required by the Process, not just the Guide, and it be performed by designated CGs or IGs as appropriate, not just delegated to Team members.