Re: draft minutes of UFDTF 7th Nov

Bijan Parsia wrote:
> 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 found your frankness very helpful, and my flabber was not gasted!
It seems very natural and normal that business organisations that 
participate in a WG will have conflicts of interest. If they had no 
financial interest in the area of work, they would not participate.


> 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.


A difficulty I have is that at least some people are put off producing 
any such documents by an apparently negative attitude. If, as appears to 
be the case, you are opposed to some documents on principal, then there 
is a danger that the WG will fail to produce such documents.

For me, these documents are important for the goal of a successful OWL 
1.1 Recommendation in that:
a) they are charter deliverables
    A failure to produce them would be, a priori, a plausible ground for 
objection to a proposed OWL 1.1 rec.
b) they are crucial for wide review by communities that I, and HP, care 
about
   Here, I not only mean user facing docs, but docs that are accessible 
to the RDF/OWL Full community.
   Without such wide review OWL 1.1 is unlikely to be as successful as 
OWL 1.0.


> Technically inaccuracies in outreach material, 
 > [...] can render the outreach
> material actively harmful. 

Wholehearted agreement. Any fully endorsed WG outreach material needs to 
have adequate and competent technical review. That doesn't mean that you 
personally need do it, particularly if you feel that you have a conflict 
of interest with your own business interests in outreach material. I 
would see it as wholly legitimate for Clark and Parsia to object to 
informative docs that had not had adequate competent technical review, 
without that being an implicit volunteering to do such a review.

It is not clear when in-depth competent technical review is first needed 
- but certainly towards the end of the process all technical errors need 
to be fixed (well as much as is possible).

> 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.

Agree.


> 
> 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.
> 

I think that technical design is different from informative 
documentation - and the acceptance/non-acceptance criteria are distinct.


> Cheers,
> Bijan.
> 


Jeremy

Received on Friday, 9 November 2007 11:13:39 UTC