Re: What are the PD/PP constraints? [Was: Re: Request by AB]

[adding the AB as they might want to comment]

On 3/5/2012 1:54 PM, Arthur Barstow wrote:
> On 2/7/12 5:51 AM, ext Scheppe, Kai-Dietrich wrote:
>> As an aside,
>>
>> The Advisory Board has contacted Marcos and myself, as initiators of 
>> this activity here, to contribute a list of problems with W3C Process 
>> and potential solutions.
>>
>> I, for my part, referred to this activity and that we are still in 
>> the problem finding phase and have not worked out solutions.
>> I would also refrain from making proposals that have not been 
>> supported by this group, as I think this is what this group is about.
>>
>>
>> However, it would be nice to be able to give the AB some material to 
>> work with.
> Hi All,
>
> Sorry for the late reply on this but having just caught up on most of 
> the comments on the recent Living Standards thread, I wanted to step 
> back a bit and try to get some clarification on a couple of questions 
> that were no doubt discussed a while ago ...
>
> What exactly is in play here i.e. what are the constraints re changing 
> the PD and PP? Is everything in those docs truly open for change or 
> are there parts of them that are considered axiomatic and thus deemed 
> sacred and immutable? If the later, what are they?

We are starting with a clean sheet of paper.  There is nothing deemed 
sacred and immutable.

An example of that is that we solicited input from Hixie.  He responded 
with a description of quite a different approach to generate standards.

But it is important to also realize that the AB is not yet "up to" 
generating solutions.  The major focus is to identify problems and agree 
on them.

Back to the Hixie example: while he provided problems and solutions, the 
focus of the AB discussion subsequently was to crisply tease out 
"problems" for the problem list.

This was intended as input to the mid-February AB meeting.  Pretty soon, 
I believe the AB will write to the AC with a status update.  In any 
case, input is still welcome - it's not as if we will change the process 
overnight.

>
> I'd like to understand this now (at least generally) so I don't waste 
> my time working on "solutions" or "proposals", especially if folks 
> from the AB and/or PSIG are just going to stand up say "wait, wait - 
> we can't do X/Y/Z because that would change A/B/C and they are 
> immutable!".

Well we are working on problems, not solutions.  To be sure, there are 
aspects of the W3C process that people like, and solutions that most 
people would reject are probably not worth proposing.  My impression, 
for example, is that most folks like getting RF commitments.  So 
proposing that we drop RF might not go very far.

>
> Also, an observation I have - and it may be incorrect - is that there 
> is a considerable amount of work that is ongoing at the W3C where the 
> overall consensus of the active participants re process is effectively 
> "if it ain't broke don't fix it" (f.ex. Semantic Web?, WAI?, XML?). If 
> we assume this is true, is the idea in his CG more about how to change 
> the processes for some specific WG that may decide to opt-in to a new 
> proces model? Or is the CG trying to create a new process model for 
> every WG?

I would agree that we should focus on "real" problems.

>
> -Cheers, TheOtherAB

gee, I thought that was Alan Bird.

>
>

Received on Monday, 5 March 2012 21:47:32 UTC