Re: editors - "versions" in the WG drafts

I'll have a more careful look at this later, however a quick observation...

At 10:23 AM 8/26/2002 +0900, Olivier Thereaux wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I noticed today that we did not update the "WG draft" links (redirects,
>in fact) since the may bunch. My bad, certainly, since I've been in
>charge of updating the redirects.
>
>I think it's a pity because we didn't update these more often that the
>ones published in the TR (technical reports) space, even though there
>have been a lot of itermediary versions in QA/WG/2002/XX/.

This was partially intentional.  We (editors) recognize /TR/, WG drafts, 
and editor drafts.  WG was supposed to be more frequent than /TR/ -- like 
every 4-6 weeks.  Editor was supposed to be limited circulation.  I found 
in the last two months that the only effective way to get adequate WG 
involvement in weekly SpecGL issue resolution was to post a weekly new 
draft with issues and changes flagged inline.

I have no reason to think that these numerous drafts should be hidden, but 
on the other hand they show much less preparation than WG drafts -- much 
rougher -- and I wonder if exposing them all might not be "overload".

-lOFTON.


>We're not hiding the WG work (e.g, the URIs for WG drafts are visible in
>the publicly archived WG list), but we're not disclosing it well. What's
>the interest of having WG drafts if (according to our commitment to work
>in public) we're not giving the "public" (ie the IG) ways to react and
>contribute in "real time"?
>
>An example of that is that the WG page shows no WG draft for test GL,
>whereas there have been a few WG drafts already.
>
>Another concern I have is about the "versions" headers in the WG drafts.
>We have a lot of dated drafts, but for most of them the "versions"
>headers are wrong (most of the time the dated draft claims to be the may
>draft...). Worse, I think, the 20020826 WG draft of the spec GL claims
>that the previous version is the may one. I think this is very bad!
>
>Don't misintepret my words, I'm not saying the editors are doing a
>bad job, I'm just thinking the importance of this headers is being
>overlooked : WG drafts, all of them, have a *major* importance to track
>the WG's work history, as much as the mail archives, if not more.
>
>Hence this proposal for action(s):
>
>- immediate action : fix all drafts between may and august, add/fix
>   "this version" and "previous version" on all of them. I volunteer to
>   do it if editors are happy with it, or you can take care of it by
>   yourself if you prefer/don't want me to mess with your drafts.
>   Editors, please answer "go ahead" "no I'll do it", or "I disagree with
>   the whole idea" (and let's discuss it...).
>
>- long-term rule : be sure to have those headers properly set for all WG
>   drafts, and be sure to update the redirections (/QA/WG/.htaccess) when
>   a new draft is done, and the table (/QA/WG/#docs) when it's a first
>   draft. You can always contact me if you don't know how to do it or
>   prefer not to do it yourself.
>
>Regards,
>--
>Olivier Thereaux - W3C
>http://www.w3.org/People/olivier | http://yoda.zoy.org

Received on Monday, 26 August 2002 08:53:36 UTC