- From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.rpi.edu>
- Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:47:37 -0400
- To: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Cc: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>, team-owl-chairs@w3.org, public-owl-wg@w3.org
(This note has two parts - the first is a pedantic and boring discussion of WG and W3C policy - I suggest all who don't care about such minutia skip it -Sandro, you probably need to read it. The second is more germane to the WG, as it makes clearer what the issue is) <:pedantic> Bijan - the dispute seems to be whether "publication schedule" is a specific enough agendum item for a discussion of moving specific publications to WD by a specific time. I will be happy to say "charter violation" instead of "process violation" (in fact, the process Issue I would point out is to follow the charter). I claim that the agenda did NOT provide enough warning of a specific nature on something that members of the WG had not discussed first in email or anywhere else. If there had been a specific agenda item posing the resolution, I would have had time to state my issues before, rather than after, the telecon - which is necessary so that those of us who cannot make the telecons can be allowed to participate.\ I'm sorry that you and i disagree on this, but it is early in the WG and it is an important time to make sure we are sticking to process - it is much easier in the W3C to avoid issues early on then to fix them later. Further, we should probably get a chair/W3C rep resolution on something - if an agenda is emailed out, and then it is posted to the wiki and changed, I think only the agenda AS MAILED should count - because many of us can access email when traveling, but may have more trouble getting to a wiki - further, the email has a verifiable date that is easily ascertained, where the Wiki takes detective work to make sure we can tell whether someone changed something substantive within the 24 hour window </:pedantic> Anyway, I'm not opposed to a decision that we consider moving the documents forward - but the way the resolution is written it says we WILL move THESE three documents forward BY A CERTAIN DATE - I would like to believe we will work on understanding these documents, making sure we have consensus on the key issues, and publishing as ready. I do not believe we have had anywhere near the amount of discussion necessary to decide at this point whether we are ready or not. The current documents represent the consensus reached in an informal process outside the W3C. Our WDs represent the consensus within the WG. I do not believe these are currently the same thing, and would like us to do due diligence so that we end up producing the best new version of OWL while minimizing impact on current implementations (across the Semantic Web community, not just in the academic SW groups). This doesn't mean I don't think the features in the documents are useful, or that I oppose them, frankly I just feel I haven't had time to consider them fully - I raised a large number of issues with early drafts (in public) and I need a chance to go back and evaluate where we stand. So none of this is meant to be negative, rather, I think we need to be more deliberative - which is very frustrating to those who've been working on these for a long time, but remember the rest of us are just getting up to speed, and you need to give us time to reach appropriate levels of understanding -JH On Oct 19, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Bijan Parsia wrote: > On 19 Oct 2007, at 14:28, Jim Hendler wrote: > >> i see the following in the log: >> RESOLVED: Our first working drafts, to be published before the 3- >> month heartbeat, will be one: (1) Structural Specification, (2) >> Semantics. We may include (3) RDF Mapping in this list. These are >> based on the text for each of these at http://www.webont.org/owl/1.1/ >> >> we should be clear - this resolution is not an actual resolution >> to publish > > It *is* an actual resolution to publish and was understood that way > by everyone on the call, afaict. > >> as such a thing >> would be a process violation at this time > > It would be helpful when raising process issues to point to the > part of the process document that substantiated your claim. > > It's quite common to make decisions...including decisions to > publish...at a meeting where some people didn't attend. In some > groups, e.g., the HTML WG, whose size is too big to expect everyone > to participate in telecons, they have --- and perhaps this is in > their charter --- agreed to always have asynch decision making > (i.e., by web survey). That's not in our charter. > >> - i can point to the charter issues, > > The charter reads: > > """When deciding a substantive technical issue, the Chair may put a > question before the group. The Chair must only do so during a group > meeting for which the agenda indicated the possibility that a > decision on that particular issue might be made. """ > > I'll concede that this is a technical issue. So then we look at the > agenda, which is a bit complicated because, qua wiki page, it evolved. > > The mailing list reminder, which, I believe, is informative (wiki > page is canonical): > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-wg/2007Oct/0065.html > > Seems to be in time for the meeting (24 hours before). > > It contains: > > Deliverables (15 min) > Wiki authorship policy > Publication schedule (Bijan) > > Which, I believe, sets up a reasonable expectation that some > decision could be made about the publication schedule. To clarify > this point, the Wiki agenda was evolved to make this fact more > salient: > > http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Teleconference. > 2007.10.17/Agenda&oldid=383 > > This was done at 08:54, 17 October 2007, so the day of. I think the > original item indicated the possibility that there would be a > decision and the subsequent clarification firmly clarified it. > >> but suffice to say an actual decision to publish has to be >> announced in advance, > > This is garbled. What announced in advance of *what*? You mean that > it is announced before a meeting where a decision might be made to > publish that that decision might be made at that meeting? That's a > reasonable *request*, but I don't think it's a process issue. I > cannot find anything to that effect in the charter. You can, of > course, delegate a proxy: > <http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/groups.html#group- > participation> > >> there's some other issues as well (usually the decision to publish >> is via a formal vote so as to meet all these needs) > > That's not my experience and I do think it's at all necessary. > >> however, a resolution saying we are considering a proposal to do >> this (that some people still object to) is fine - so that's what i >> assume this is - right? > > Nope. > > There were no objections to the resolution that we shall publish: > Structural Specification > Formal Semantics > And optionally RDF Mapping > > By the heartbeat deadline (3 months or so from the first telecon, I > believe). > > Neither was there a request for a vote. The resolution went through > several iterations to meet concerns of members attending the > telecon. There was consensus. > > What was not resolved was whether we'd publish these documents > substantively earlier, e.g., next week, or by the first F2F. > > Cheers, > Bijan. "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?." - Albert Einstein Prof James Hendler http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler Tetherless World Constellation Chair Computer Science Dept Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180
Received on Friday, 19 October 2007 16:48:11 UTC