A suggestion: Add status flags to BPs?

Hi all,

The level of discussion around the BP doc since the beginning of the 
month has been terrific. From my POV, the WG is now working very well. 
Compare current discussions with those of, say, 6 months ago. When we 
get to discussing things like whether a BP is a MUST or a SHOULD - 
that's detailed standards work.

This is good and it's what we're here to do.

It's also clear that we have significant work still to do before we will 
agree a number of issues among ourselves, let alone among the wider 
community we are trying to serve.

In a few hours' time, Deirdre's planning to ask the group whether or not 
it feels comfortable publishing the FPWD of the doc. Looking at the 
comments and substantive discussions my conclusion is that the answer is 
likely to be no.

*However* I have a suggestion that I hope might be useful. As well as 
the issues that are raised in the doc, I think we could add a flag to 
each BP that would follow the (well known among some) pattern of

- Unstable (don't trust this one folks!)
- Testing (what do you think? Any implementation feedback you can give us?)
- Stable (we think we're done)

(see http://www.w3.org/2003/06/sw-vocab-status/ns)

We could use other terms but it might take us a month to decide which 
ones so I suggest that for today, we either adopt these thee options or not.

That would allow us to indicate our own level of confidence in each BP, 
thus allowing us to formally publish something with much less fear of 
"you said do what??!!"

In terms of today's meeting we might run through all the BPs and get a 
sense of which were at each of those three levels?

Incidentally, I was struck particularly by one of Makx's comments 
yesterday: how do we know that any of these are Best Practices? Where's 
the evidence?

That's an important point and, when we get to the later stages of the 
process, essential. We do actually have to *prove* that people have 
followed these BPs successfully. It's part of the community engagement 
work that any standard needs.

Phil.

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Data Activity Lead
http://www.w3.org/2013/data/

http://philarcher.org
+44 (0)7887 767755
@philarcher1

Received on Friday, 23 January 2015 11:32:20 UTC