Re: draft minutes of UFDTF 7th Nov

On Nov 9, 2007, at 9:58 AM, Jeremy Carroll wrote:

> Bijan
>
> I would find it helpful, if you would clarify whether you were  
> speaking
> - as Univ of Manchester rep
> - on behalf of Clark & Parsia LLC
> - or merely as yourself
>
> during the discussion of goals/styles/audiences.

Myself.

I had not then had a chance to consult with anyone else from either  
organization about specifics...I was trying to give background on why  
someone, and I also decided to concretize it by putting myself in the  
hotseat...might have legitimate member organization driven interests  
against the production of arbitrary quantities of outreach materials  
as *working group deliverables*.

I favor, for a *number* of reasons, a fairly restrained approach to  
meeting our charter obligations wrt outreach material. I cannot say,  
in advance, that I would support or oppose any specific proposal...I  
presume this is true for *everyone* on *all* WG decisions. I'll point  
out that I have been made more inclined to make my *potential*  
opposition manifest as early and as often as possible due, in part,  
to expectation setting posts like:
	http://www.w3.org/mid/47308D7F.2010405@hpl.hp.com

"""Precisely which documents come out of the working group process is  
emergent, lots of people have an effective veto, but hardly anyone  
uses it.
...
I think legitimate reasons for these are few and far between."""

Now your list of plausible reasons include several that I'd voice as  
possibilities, but this sort of language seems chilling. But,  
apparently, trying to be clear about my concerns is also deemed so  
outre that...well...people's flabbers were gasted. So, I guess I'll  
wait until there are documents or text on the table to raise any  
specific concerns.

I think that outreach material is very important. It does compete  
with things that I (and others!) do professionally, e.g., write  
articles, books, tutorials, perform training sessions, etc. It also  
requires a lot of WG effort including extensive user *AND* technical  
review. Technically inaccuracies in outreach material, unless very  
deliberately introduced in a pedagogically sound way, can render the  
outreach material actively harmful. (This is distinct from us  
producing all sorts of material "in house" primarily for in house  
consumption, since we have a much tighter feedback loop, ancillary  
channels (e.g., telecons), and WG participants have a high level of  
commitment.)

Obviously the standards are much higher for a Rec track document (or  
part thereof), than a WG note, and much higher for a WG note than for  
a Wiki page.

I do encourage people to put forth proposals, but only if they  
recognize that such effort does not entail acceptance. As an example,  
I put quite a bit of work into my annotation system proposal, and I  
have no expectation that it will necessarily be incorporated into our  
design, or if it is incorporated, that any of my text necessarily  
will used.

Cheers,
Bijan.

P.S. Feel free to contact me off list or on the phone if you want to  
chat with me about these issues, or even just to denounce me.  
Although, denunciators, you may consider me adequately denunciated :)  
I don't tend to reply to followups on list. If off list discussion  
reaches a reasonable point of harmony or summary, I'm sure those  
interlocutors will be happy to summarize back to the group.

Received on Friday, 9 November 2007 10:45:33 UTC