RE: meetings minutes

Hi Tzviya,

Thank you for responding to my message and for raising important points, I will try to address them the best I can.

  1.  Recent history clarifications.
You wrote: "I spent quite a long time reading through the emails from the last year, and I don't quite agree that we got to a point where we all feel good about the latest version of the draft. Despite best intentions, the group never had a call to discuss the issues, and the draft never had a legal review."

I am afraid this perception isn't accurate considering the fact that we did have two group calls (as captured by the revision history of the draft CEPC) and the statements made by the PWETF co-chairs in this particular email (attached). You were copied directly on it but I realize it's easy to miss something that happened over 8 months ago, in mid-February 2018. So, I guess the right question to ask is "Why have we never had a call to discuss the final draft?". Despite best intentions, despite so much efforts put into it and work being done, and despite multiple attempts to schedule a call (starting with this in early March 2018: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/member-pwetf/2018JanMar/0033.html) - we still managed to let it go into non-existence. Allowing the important work perish [whether by willful inaction or procrastination, or for any other reasons] after such an effort was put in place to improve the existing CEPC sends a very wrong message to anyone who could potentially be a future contributor.

  1.  Why the revision was / is needed.

Without repeating a long discussion we had last year, my main concern about the current CEPC language is that, despite the fact that it's been produced by the _Positive Work Environment_ task force, the document itself is very negative and, in my opinion, not only does not reflect who we (W3C) are as an organization, but also doesn't accomplish the intended purpose, and is counterproductive.
Here is a simple example to explain what I mean: let's say someone in a group setting is behaving badly showing little respect towards ideas and opinions of other members. Telling that person "Don't be a jerk!" is counterproductive - what one would actually hear is an accusation "You are a jerk!", which would immediately trigger a defensive reaction "I am NOT a jerk!" As a result, the "accusation" is dismissed as pointless and something that doesn't apply. In the end - not only we failed to achieve the intended effect of correcting one's behavior to the benefit of the group, but we also lost the opportunity to do it in future settings, with that person developing a dismissive position.
Unfortunately, this is how our current CEPC is worded - DON'T be X, NEVER do Y and Z, etc. - these kind of statements often trigger a dismissive reaction (this is something that doesn't apply to me, I am a good guy!), and, therefore, deemed irrelevant. My initial intent (and the draft that we produced as a result of the collective work reflects that) was to reverse this approach, by creating a document that sets the high level of behavioral standards we want to aspire to, clearly defines what behaviors are not tolerated, and serves as a useful reference that brings the spotlight to certain behavioral issues people may not be consciously aware of. And the good thing - I believe that the draft we produced has accomplished all this! It may not be complete, something may still need to be added, but it fulfills its mission of being the document that outlines the guiding principles we want W3C participants adhere to.

  1.  Using current CEPC as a basis for future work.

I agree that it would be highly beneficial to capture the issues that we believe warrant an update of the Code, but I don't think that we can accomplish the task by attempting incremental updates / edits. Sometimes, it's actually easier to start over, especially if we want to adopt a radically different approach to how we communicate with the W3C participants and members. I do believe that the draft produced by the PWETF last year (and finalized early this year) is a much better starting point, and the issues have already been captured / discussed on the email list. It may be useful to try and transfer that collective wisdom into the new Github environment. For the sake of completeness, and to save our collective time of digging through the email archives, I attached the latest revision of the draft CEPC to this email.


Thank you,
Vlad


From: Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2018 2:54 PM
To: Levantovsky, Vladimir <Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotype.com>; public-pwe@w3.org
Subject: RE: meetings minutes

Hi Vlad,

Thanks for the note. Sorry you couldn't make it to the meeting.

We are attempting to ensure that your feedback and all feedback from others on PWE is reflected. I spent quite a long time reading through the emails from the last year, and I don't quite agree that we got to a point where we all feel good about the latest version of the draft. Despite best intentions, the group never had a call to discuss the issues, and the draft never had a legal review. The PWECG has every intention of picking up the work of PWETF, and we are in fact relying on the members of the PWETF to help us.

Because we are producing a document that can be used in a legal setting, not a specification, Ralph suggested, and everyone on the call agreed, that we approach proposed revisions with GitHub issues and documentation. This means that we propose changes based on research and evidence about why changes are needed. That does not mean we will discard the draft that you, Amy, Ann, and others proposed. It does mean that we have to look at why we are even proposing a revision of the CEPC.

I have asked all members to help document proposed changes based on the discussions last year in GitHub [1]. When we move forward with revisions, we need to be able to explain them to those not familiar with our history or discussions. Pointing to GitHub issues that document explanations is an excellent approach. I am open to other approaches, but we have decided that GitHub will be our main forum for work in this CG.

We welcome your feedback and participation.

Thank you,
Tzviya

[1] https://github.com/w3c/PWETF/issues


Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Levantovsky, Vladimir [mailto:Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotype.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2018 11:10 PM
To: Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>; public-pwe@w3.org<mailto:public-pwe@w3.org>
Subject: RE: meetings minutes

Hi all,

Thank you for remembering both my criticism and my contributions to the CEPC rewrite, but I'd like to emphasize that:

  1.  I did express an emphatic disapproval of the existing CEPC last November, and that was primarily the reason why I wrote the new draft (following the principle "criticize and contribute, not just criticize!");
  2.  My initial draft has been subjected to a wide group review and many revisions (eight revisions to be exact), where both the group co-chairs and the group members contributed their edits and ideas. The latest draft has all the revision history captured in it, and I believe we got it to a point where we all felt good about it and agreed that the legal review would be the appropriate next step.
  3.  It is my (maybe wrong) perception that the newly formed PWECG has no intention to resume the work we conducted last year - I tried to get a clear answer on my questions related to the status of the draft we produced, but got nothing. If the newly formed CG does intend to simply restart the activity and ignore everything we have already done in the past (meaning that the work we conducted produced nothing but hot air) - I am not so sure I see an incentive to continue as a contributor, I cannot afford wasting time and effort on something we've already discussed and, at least at that time, were happy with the results.
  4.  I did send my regrets.

Cheers,
Vlad

P.S. I do think it is a very worthwhile effort to resurrect the draft we created and see what, if anything, is left to be improved. We've come a long way from the very first version of it to the final revision, and in the process of doing it we discovered that the new draft was very much in line with the Code and policies other organizations have in place, both in wording and in spirit.


From: Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2018 1:39 PM
To: public-pwe@w3.org<mailto:public-pwe@w3.org>
Subject: meetings minutes

Thanks for attending and thanks to Dave for scribing

https://www.w3.org/2018/10/11-pwe-minutes.html<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.w3.org_2018_10_11-2Dpwe-2Dminutes.html&d=DwMFAg&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=Sc-ry7Q3xvBnomEBkMoE2_ivmrUn9t3iPURPqMYwR3mRAaAfoxAAQdIUO6oCmSDQ&m=GYizUYMBAXQiAjWGi8GtfPBJWoysidvLJLZHLkxIkxQ&s=kEAOZnIhgO3dKliMkgLCfSp05bM61vy3VXD22Zr2N_M&e=>

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>




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