Re: Proposal to Adopt HTML5 (progress on recruiting editors)

On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 16:56 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On Apr 18, 2007, at 4:38 PM, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 16:07 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> >
> >>  Who has been asked? Have any
> >> of them expressed willingness or unwillingness to serve? I think the
> >> Working Group deserves to know, and it is inappropriate for the
> >> chairs to keep secrets from the group for an extended period.
> >
> > With respect, I disagree. Information about who has been
> > asked and how they responded and why is not in the technical
> > scope of the WG, and public discussion of it doesn't seem
> > likely to be useful.
> >
> > Just by way of example, medical reasons factor heavily
> > into one of the discussions.
> 
> I do not think it is important or appropriate to publicly state the  
> reasons a given person declined. Or if someone declined and didn't  
> want it publicized that they were even asked, I think that would be ok.
> 
> But I do think the chairs hunting for an editor without any  
> transparency to the rest of the working group is questionable thing  
> to do, for a public-process working group especially. If chairs act  
> on behalf of the group, they have an obligation to report back.

At first, I balked at "without any transparency"; then I searched
the archives, only to find that, indeed, I haven't been very
explicit in my call for spec editor nominations. It has been
so much on my mind that I somehow assumed everyone else knew.
I'll try to do better about that.

I was reasonably explicit in the requirements/design principles
discussion...
[[
This does raise a question in my mind... is anyone interested
to edit a requirements document? I think it could be useful,
particularly in negotiating dependencies with other groups.
A good way to volunteer would be to draft an outline and
send it to the group.
]]
 -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0423.html


But in the spec threads, I have made only oblique references, e.g. ...

[[
And I'm interested to learn about alternative
ways to move forward.
]]
  --  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0501.html

[[
Henrik offers this as a suggestion; presumably, a suggestion to
the editor. The chairs haven't appointed an editor yet, but
currently, we have one clear offer to serve as editor of the spec,
from Ian Hickson.
]]
 -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0976.html



> Here are the reasons I think information about the chair recruiting  
> effort may be useful to the rest of the group:
> 
> 1) Others may wish to propose their own candidates for editor - it  
> would be useful to know who is already being considered and who has  
> been ruled out.

If anyone has candidates to nominate, by all means, please do!
Either publicly or to just the chairs.

Nominations that go to the chairs run the risk of duplication,
but the cost of duplicate nominations is small compared
to the "if someone declined and didn't  
want it publicized that they were even asked" issue.


> 2) Some candidates on the list may be objectionable to various  
> parties in the group, just as the team of "just Ian Hickson" is  
> apparently objectionable to you and Chris. By the way, I'd like to  
> know the nature of the objection. Why do you guys think this will be  
> a problem, and are your objections being made as chairs, or as  
> representatives of your respective organizations? If the latter, then  
> I think we have a serious process problem here. Any other  
> organization that objected to a nominated editor would have to make  
> their case to the chairs and to the working group, but you guys are  
> bypassing that.

Perhaps there's a time and a place for open discussion
of the objections, but actually, I hope it doesn't come
to that; they're not technical in nature. I prefer to
focus on the options for going forward.

A number of parties have expressed concerns only to the chairs,
and as appointing editors is the job of the chairs*, the
obligation to share their concerns more widely is much less
than with technical decisions that the WG makes.

* "Every technical report published as part of the technical report
development process is edited by one or more editors appointed by a
Working Group Chair."
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr.html#DocumentsGeneral


> 3) Some may wish to privately encourage potential candidates.

Go go go!

> Regards,
> Maciej
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 03:30:23 UTC