Re: Survey of list on the Unified Social XG Charter (Feedback

On Fri, 27 Feb 2009, Renato Iannella wrote:

>
> On 26 Feb 2009, at 11:30, Harry Halpin wrote:
>
>> The general trend at the W3C is away from making decisions at face-to-face
>> meetings and even telecons and towards doing most of the work and even
>> decisions on public list-servs. This is a proper and correct response to
>> criticisms of the W3C of lack of transparency.    Remember, we're doing
>> *open* standards work.
>
>
> Then, please post the Survey to the group.
>
> I have comments about the questions, as some are misleading and some are 
> actually impossible to answer....
>
> ...but in the interest of transparency, I will be happy to make these 
> comments to the wider list.
>

I find it is always best in the interests of transparency to cc 
www-archive@w3.org, as I am doing on all back-channel e-mails from now on.

Please do send comments ASAP, I have been waiting 24 hours for comments 
before sending out in the interest of being polite. However, given the 
telecon time is approaching, I do not want to wait anymore.

Again, to re-iterate, I think the main issue here is how many 
deliverables to put in the charter [1]. If I chair, I would *not* accept 
to have more than a ten deliverables, even with a huge group. I would be 
almost unwilling to accept more than 5. We had three deliverables for GRDDL,
  which also had a year  length, and that took a lot of work from a fairly 
dedicated team of about 10-15 people and a devoted staff contact.

  This Social Web XG  seems, at least from current activity, to 
be about the same size. If you have had any experience Renato (or anyone 
else who has done this before, such as Karl, Dom, Mauro, Fabien, Krishna) 
with a group with a year-long charter having such a number of deliverables
and actually  completing them within a year, please do say. From my 
knowledge, such  examples are non-existent. I understand W3C Process is 
new to many people,  therefore I am providing links and guidance, as 
others are as well.

I was hoping that after Tim edited the charter, we would see a surge in 
activity of people willing to do the work, and in places where there was 
not enough editors or interest, they would be deleted and could then be 
picked up by a WG within a year if the XG is successful. For reasons that 
I am not sure about, I have not seen the interest. I was reasonably hoping, 
as I proposed several times, that deliverables without sufficient interest 
would be deleted. Again, for reasons I do not understand but seem mostly 
to do with some fear of driving down participation from people that are 
not currently on the list (and thus I find unlikely to join at least at 
the XG level), there has been considerable backlash from some 
on removing or merging deliverables, although not from people familiar 
with W3C process and experience in open standards. Also, if we had very 
active  participation, a task-force model should be considered. However, 
right now I suspect the task forces would be mostly two or three people 
:)

W3C Team members do have to approve such charters, and I would expect W3C 
Team members not approve of such a charter [2]. I do believe with some 
sensible editing and reduction of deliverables such a charter will be 
easily approved. However, if all of a sudden activity on the list 
sky-rockets within the  first month, do note that the Incubator Group 
Guide notes that:

"Refinements to an XG Charter may be made by the XG on a consensus basis 
during the first month of operation. Only those changes that propose to 
alter significantly the scope or method of work must first be cleared with 
the Activity Lead."

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/UnifiedSocialXG
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/how-to.html#Evaluation

> Cheers...  Renato Iannella
> NICTA
>
>

-- 
 				--harry

 	Harry Halpin
 	Informatics, University of Edinburgh
         http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin

Received on Friday, 27 February 2009 04:34:00 UTC