Progress rapidification (was Re: Labels and Milestones on GitHub)

On 01/08/2016 10:06 AM, Manu wrote:
> I don't think we're on a healthy trajectory wrt. the specs at the
> moment. I'll put together an email to the group with a proposal to
> attempt to address these issues next.

Apologies for the delay in getting these proposals out to the group.

Proposal #1: Have weekly WPWG telecons.
Proposal #2: Spend at least 45 minutes per call on fundamental design
              issues.

Regarding proposal #1: Have weekly WPWG telecons.

Most every WG that I've been a part of that has made rapid progress has
either 1) been run by a "benevolent dictator/editor" (HTML5) or 2)
scheduled long/regular weekly telecons focused on issue discussion
(JSON-LD). Neither approach is a guaranteed recipe for success, but with
the right group, I've seen them work before. I'm suggesting we do the
latter (#2) in this group. The issues aren't being surfaced to enough
people on a frequent basis.

I've chatted a bit with Ian and a few others about it. I think the
general feeling is that I'm prematurely worrying about the conversations
that we have not had yet. I can see a very large gap between where we
want to be by FPWD and where we are today. The group isn't coming up to
speed fast enough w/ the various options on the table (IMHO). We're
focusing on easy issues / low hanging fruit.

For example, the registry of short names for payment method identifiers
has gotten quite a bit of attention lately. We seem to be coming to
consensus on a few things in that thread. That's good, but it ignores
the fact that we still haven't made any decisions on the fundamental
data model we'll be using. Is it JSON (like in paymentRequest)? JSON-LD
(like in the Web Payments CG specs)? If we had been focusing on that, we
might have found that the short names registry discussion would've been
solved by the data model decision. We need to be more deliberate in the
way that we go about addressing these issues.

wrt. Data model, at this point, I'm unconvinced that many of the folks
in the group know what the design trade-offs are to a level where a
consensus decision could be made. This is just one of the issues that
makes FPWD a pipe-dream until we address it. It takes a long time to
determine the best path forward for a WG with a fundamental design issue
like this, and frankly, we're just not putting in the telecon time (or
issue tracker time) to come to a conclusion on this any time soon.

That's one of the reasons for proposal #2 - we need to increase the
amount of time we spend discussing issues, even if there is no clear
consensus decision to be made (we can't even get to proposals until
folks understand the difference between JSON and JSON-LD, for instance).

I believe that there is a way of organizing issue discussion that helps
us move through the issues in a more educated/efficient manner (rather
than the random walk we're doing now). This leads me to the third proposal:

Proposal #3: Order the issue discussion in a way that tackles
fundamental design issues first, followed by less fundamental issues second.

I will try to come up with a issue discussion priority list tomorrow,
but in the meantime... thoughts?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.

Received on Tuesday, 12 January 2016 05:26:51 UTC