Re: wiki aims for community voice/NPOV [was: review of "The root element" subsection]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 10:04 -0500, Robert Burns wrote:
> On Jul 9, 2007, at 9:25 AM, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 03:40 -0500, Robert Burns wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Please feel free to add review comments on this subsection at
> >> (signing comments will help facilitate followup):
> >> <http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/DraftReviews1/Root>
> >
> > It seems to me that "signed comments" are easier handled in email.
> > email is good for individual opinions and new arguments.
> >
> > Topics in the ESW wiki should be written in the community
> > voice (aka neutral point of view/NPOV), to the extent that's feasible.
> >
> > "Try to write in the community voice, but if you don't see a way to do
> > that, you should sign your contributions"
> >  -- http://esw.w3.org/topic/QA
> >
> > It's good to _cite_ email arguments from the wiki. But for new
> > arguments/opinions, I'd rather we use email.
> 
> Sorry, about the confusion Dan. I had done this based on a  
> conversation I had with Ian onlist.

No need to apologize... we're all figuring this out as we go...

>  Since these reviews are detailed  
> reviews by specific members (usually just a few), I didn't imagine  
> they could possibly be in neutral voice, as in an encyclopedia wiki.  
> However, it seems most useful to be able look those up in one place.  

Exactly. I think an index can be neutral. It's a verifyable fact
that somebody sent a review of a certain section. (One could
intentionally omit certain reviews from the index, but that risk
seems manageable, since any WG member can fix it).

> In any even, I don't feel that strongly about signing. I just thought  
> it would be clearer for the editors to track down the culprits :-).
> 
> My concern was also that the editors have said in the past that if  
> its not on the wiki, they're not going to see it. So it seems like an  
> arduous task to ask WG members to review these sections and  
> subsection if the editors won't even see the results.

I think the editors were exaggerating a bit; I think they'll read
much of the email. But we all need to keep in mind that with the
volume of email on this list, any one message might get
skipped/missed/forgotten by the editor.
So redundant mechanisms are helpful.
(a) an index of detailed reviews by section seems worthwhile, and
(b) significant issues should get their own wiki topic

And it's entirely possible that a comment will still get forgotten
and have to be re-raised later. That's just life in a large
community process. Over time, I expect our issue tracking processes
and tools will mature and get more reliable. (Much of that will
come from people learning to deal with mediocre tools, keep in mind.)

> You're the chair though, so I'll defer to whatever you think is best.

Let's give this a try, anyway...

> Take care,
> Rob
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Monday, 9 July 2007 15:41:26 UTC