Re: comments on WDs and non-published WG documents

but we have had these documents in public for a long time, and we all  
know from experience that it is harder to remove or change something  
after it s published than before.  More importantly, by definition  
comments from within the group should count as much or more than  
outside comments (since people in the group are paying in time and  
costs to play) and thus we should address any of these which may  
arise before soliciting more public opinion - this is why I still  
don't understand the push - I've never heard a WG argue that getting  
outside comments should proceed internal discussion -- sometimes, in  
fact, external comments are used specifically to elucidate internal  
comments -- and we give up that opportunity by doing things this way
  -JH
p.s. to elucidate to new WG members - often a WG will say "we cannot  
decide whether to include method A or method B for feature C" and  
then solicit public comment - (a good example of this was the RDF  
Core WGs ideas on datatypes for RDF).  Most readers will only review  
a WD once, so if we go out now and get comments, and then later  
encounter these sort of design choice issues, we are making it more  
difficult to solicit advice at that time.

On Oct 22, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:

>
> From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.rpi.edu>
> Subject: Re: comments on WDs and non-published WG documents
> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:54:24 -0400
>
>>> In any case, all we need to overcome this particular problem is to
>>> make
>>> an internal editor's draft immediately after the WD and have WG  
>>> member
>>> organizations make comments against that inside the WG.
>>
>> why do it ass-backwards like that?  Why not do an internal editors
>> draft NOW and then get the WG comments registered BEFORE we represent
>> it as a consensus document of the WG?  That would have the nice
>> feature of being able to answer questions from people in our
>> organizations and elsewhere with solid answers instead of "Oh, we
>> haven't discussed that yet", "Oh, that might get taken out later,"
>> "Gee, I never realized that" and other such helpful things...
>>   Probably wouldn't delay things much, and would make it clear we are
>> publishing in good faith (and we wouldn't need a State of the
>> Document that was full of weasel words).
>>   I don't see where taking due caution within the WG is a bad thing,
>> and still would like to hear a good argument for doing things
>> differently in this case.
>>     -JH
>
> Well, *the* reason to publish a WD now is to get comments from outside
> the WG quickly.  WD publication does do this.  Making an internal  
> draft
> does not do nearly as good a job.  Yes, publication of the current
> documents may produce comments that mirror what we would do in the WG
> anyway, but I am in favour of getting outside comments soon.
>
> How little delay do you think producing an internal document first  
> would
> produce?  Would we be able to go this route quickly enough that we  
> could
> publish WDs and have some comments before the first F2F?
>
> peter
>

"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 Monday, 22 October 2007 18:04:50 UTC