RE: Participation in good standing

My 2  cents

I do not like the members in good standing thing so much either. But I
think that Joe is mixing two distinct issues. One is how and if we can
adapt the members in good standing thing so that is acknowledges the
work people are putting in. 
However there is a totally separate issue that I completely disagree
with and that is the insinuation that went with the message.

I normally do not respond to "attitude" in emails, but in this case, for
the recorded I want to publicly disagree.  I have seen W3C employees
putting in a lot of time effort and thought, as to how to encourage more
and diverse people to join the group, and participate. There may be ways
to improved the plurality of the group. But, I there is no question in
my mind that effort is genuine.

Many years ago, I got pulled into the WCAG group by Wendy, precisely
because I was somewhat different from the typical (involved in Learning
disabilities and online tools and because I  have  learning disabilities
myself). Other WCAG people  encouraged my participation, precisely
because my views and orientation to accessibility is different from what
was typical to the group at the time. Since then I have seen Wendy
actively looking for more people to participate who are "off the beaten
track".

 My own experience has been (even when I strongly disagreed with
directions in WCAG) that the W3C staff were always dedicate to trying to
build consensus and incorporate as much new methodologies, information
and techniques into WCAG as possible. Wendy is totally dedicated to
making the web accessible.

I am glad Wendy told me to sign up. I hope she does not regret it, too
much... 

All the best
Lisa Seeman 
 
Visit us at the UB Access website
UB Access - Moving internet accessibility
 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Joe Clark
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 8:41 PM
To: WAI-GL
Subject: Participation in good standing




I want WAI (read well: WAI) to be very, very clear about what it truly
means here:

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003OctDec/0556.html>

> Work statement [1]: focused mainly on membership requirements for our
> task force. People need to be members in good standing of the larger 
> WCAG group but can focus their time commitment to techniques, or split

> their time.

The membership requirements seem to have been unilaterally upgraded
overnight to read as follows:

<http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2003/12/wttf.html>
Participation

   Task Force participants must be participants in good standing of
   the WCAG WG, should have experience with a Web technology (such as
   HTML, CSS, or SVG), and must actively contribute to the work of the
   Task Force, including:
     * minimum 2 hours per week of Task Force work
     * remain current on the mailing list and respond in a timely manner
       to postings on mailing list
     * participate in Task Force telephone meetings, or send regrets to
       the list
     * assist in preparing Task Force deliverables for discussion

Essentially, even to work on HTML techniques now requires one to be PiGS
(participant in good standing).

1. That was not the case before.
2. Is that really and truly what the World Wide Web Consortium wishes to
insist on now?

Answer question 2 very carefully indeed. The Web Accessibility
Initiative stands to permanently alienate contributors if it actually
puts the proposal into practice. Perhaps I should add a third question:

3. Is that the result WAI actually intends?

Public responses, to the list, *only*, please.

--

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Wednesday, 17 December 2003 05:57:42 UTC