Last call for reference?

I am increasingly amazed.

The chairs seem intent on us voting on whether to send reference to last call.

The current draft we are asked to review is:
http://www.daml.org/2002/06/webont/owl-ref-proposed
 owl-ref-proposed.html,v 1.112 2003/01/03 04:35:38 mdean

It suffers from the following editorial issues that mean it is very difficult 
to vote for "Last Call" without giving the editor a blank check.

Obvious errors:
e.g.
"@@" (i.e. whole sections missing)
"Editorial notes to be addressed in future revisions are also highlighted."
"Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved."
"Copyright ©2002 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved."
"This document is non-normative."

I would prefer the editor to say that the document is not ready for last call 
than to repeatedly waste the time of WG members asking us to give a thorough 
review of documents that clearly need more work.

I believe the WG would insult the community if we present the current document 
as a last call WD.

Of course, all of these are fixable (and except for the missing sections 
minor), but the quantity of such todos means that there are likely to be 
additional substantive errors made while doing them.

This is in addition to the many technical issues being raised in the review 
process.

It is also clear that many WG members do not understand what our documents 
say, which partly explains the tensions between them.

I do not believe that the chairs should be asking us to approve last call WD 
at this f2f. Instead I think we should publish what we currently have, and 
indicate that we are:
- addressing editorial and presentational issues
- creating more test cases
before publishing last call, maybe in March.

I believe that we need to have higher ambitions in terms of the quality of our 
presentation.

I am sure the editor is working very hard - but our published timescale  is 
not achievable, and has been unrealistic for quite some time now.
 
Jeremy

Received on Monday, 6 January 2003 12:02:22 UTC