Re: Forms Taskforce participation

It's not very clear to me what exactly a "task force" is in W3C context. What
exactly is expected of the Forms Task Force?

At 21:50 -0400 UTC, on 2007-08-20, Matthew Raymond wrote:

>    I have some opinions on who should be on the Forms Task Force...
>
> Anne van Kesteren: Very active in both W3C and WHATWG. Opera employee.
> His selection would be a "no-brainer".

[...]

> Maciej Stachowiak: WHATWG Member. Apple employee. On par with Anne and
> Ian, if you ask me.

FWIW, if "WHATWG member" and "browser vendor employee" are arguments, then
those in itself are arguments to also have people who do not fall into that
category. For the necessary "creative solutions" you rightfully mention, it's
healthy to have a group of people coming from different backgrounds; the more
similar the background, the less incentive to be creative.

(I'm not arguing against Anne or Maciej. This is just a comment on the
arguments you list for them.)

> Matthew Raymond: I'll refrain from self-commentary. I'd like to hear
> people's comments on this, actually.

I think you'd be a fine candidate. Same for Anne and Maciej. I'm not sure
that the *combination* of those three would be balanced enough though.
Besides being able to work together professionally, it seems wise to choose
people who bring different knowledge and experience to the table. Some sort
of balance between browser implementation expertise, authoring expertise and
accessibility expertise, would seem ideal. A balance between progressive and
conservative is probably also healthy.

[...]

> Gregory Rosmaita: Very active in the mailing list. However, I question
> the quality and tactfulness of many of his arguments.

My feeling is that many WG members are displaying lack of tact regularly.
Singling one person out like this is an example of that, so if "lack of tact"
would be an argument against Gregory, it would be just as much an argument
against yourself ;) (Personally I don't take much issue with lack of tact in
itself -- not when the quality of the argument is good.)

As to quality: I think that Gregory can bring much more quality to this task
force at least as far accessibility issues are concerned than any of the
other candidates you mention (well, in as much as I know them). As I
understand it, he's also familiar with XFORMS already. (Then again, I haven't
seen much forms discussion at all on this list which makes it hard to judge
anyone's quality on this terrain.)

That aside, I'm not at alll convinced that someone must 'know everything' to
be able to provide a valuable contribution. The point of having several
people work on something together is that they can fill the gaps in each
other's knowledge/experience. So I don't think we should be looking for
individuals who would be perfect, but a group that would be perfect *as a
group*.

[...]

>  I'm wondering if the small
> size of the Task Force might limit its ability to come up with creative
> solutions and effective compromises.

Yes. And a bigger group would probably make it easier to reach a balanced
group. (But 'too' big can make it too ineffective.)


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 14:38:09 UTC