Re: User Facing Documents

On Nov 2, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

> Bijan correctly observed:
> > Furthermore, Jeremy apparently is proposing producing Working
> > Drafts that aren't rec track, or submission track, but /dev/null/
> > track (i.e., deliberately designed to be dropped after one or two
> > versions).
>
> minor correction I wouldn't want multiple such WDs
>
> To clarify:
> - I am sufficiently keen on a less technical doc coming out before  
> the end of Jan, that I prefer us to concentrate on the material  
> rather than its final publication form.
> - however it is published in a FPWD, the (best of the) material can  
> be moved to appropriate 'finished' documents
>
> So I would be happy with publishing an 'Odds and Sods WD' for two  
> iterations and then moving the contents to more stable locations as  
> the publication goals became clearer.
[snip]

I have trouble reconciling this with our initial debate about  
publishing WDs and what it means to publish one. Now, perhaps you've  
changed your mind about that, which is fine, but I'm unclear where  
that leaves other then-like-minded people.

Furthermore, WDs are somewhat static (being snapshots) where as  
explanatory material can fruitfully be more dynamic (esp. for non- 
implementors, it's helpful for the canonical explanation to  but up  
to date as possible).

So, I have a compromise proposal. Instead of WDs, why don't we  
develop explanatory material in the Wiki and then have a section in  
the core Trio WDs labeled "Explanatory Material" that contains  
pointer to our current best effort wiki pages? Ideally, we'll get  
lots of feedback on what's valuable and useful and what's not which  
we can, eventually, migrate to submissions, W3C external homes, recs,  
or parts of other recs as seems sensible. This seems lighter weight  
and potentially very productive as we don't have to hash anything out  
as a group about those pages, necessarily.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 15:07:03 UTC