Re: TAG seeks input re www-tag

Jeff Bone wrote: 
> 
> Tim Bray wrote:
<snip/> 
> > - Try to restrict discussion to those issues that the TAG
> >   plans to discuss at its next meeting - we'd have to publish
> >   our agendas well in advance, but we think we can do that.
> >   This model worked pretty well in the old XML IG.
> > - Drastically restrict posting rights to www-tag; either
> >   to TAG members or to Invited Experts or by some other
> >   criterion.
> 
> The other, unmentioned alternative would be to go to a moderated
> mailing list.  A good moderator can greatly improve the STN ratio
> of any list.  Notwithstanding issues of how that works -wrt- W3C
> mailing list software, I'd advocate that --- a liberal yet
> informed moderator could easly cut off noisy discussions that are
> not on track.  There might be some reluctance on the part of TAG
> members to play this role, so perhaps an external (non-TAG)
> moderator with a "let anything from TAG members go through, and
> all other things related and on-topic but not digressionary
> besides" policy might be the best solution.

Speaking as a lurker (if that ain't a contradiction):
- I subscribed to the list to gain insight on W3C thinking on key architectural issues and I'm certainly getting more than I bargained for.

I sympathise with Tim's point of view but is the main issue volume of messages rather than focus? Traffic is slow compared with xml-dev or others but each posting tends to merit more detailed attention.

Certainly come up with a disciplined manner of labelling and following up postings and even give guidelines to non members as to what is acceptable as a post and what is not, but a great value is here in seeing the 'under the hood' thinking, 'stream of consciousness' style, that TAG members and others give particularly in response to queries from those outside the loop, like user communities (who are not represented in the TAG)

If you restrict posting rights, at least discuss the criteria openly: It might help "us" focus comments also...and thus help you to help us



____________________________________
Peter Pappamikail
ppappamikail@europarl.eu.int
Head of Information Resources Management
Directorate of Information Technologies
European Parliament

Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2002 16:55:02 UTC