Re: Early draft of new standards proposal

Le vendredi 30 juillet 2010 à 17:03 -0500, Ian Jacobs a écrit :
>  Here it is:
>    http://www.w3.org/2010/07/community
> 
> I am trying to do several things:
> 
>   * Synthesize lots of conversations and borrow from previous proposals
>   * Come up with a framework looking at proposals.
> 
> I am very interested in your feedback (which I'll read when I return  
> from vacation) in particular on:
> 
>   * The vision statements

It wasn't clear to me whether you're asking to pick one of the vision
statements among the two, or just whether the two stated visions seem to
adequately reflect what the TF has been working on.

If the latter, they look good to me (although I'm not entirely sure what
their intended purposes are).

>   * The objectives. What high-level messaging is important to  
> communicate our intent? Are the objectives all in scope? What's missing?

Look good overall. I particularly like 2.2.

I don't understand what "Explore ideas to more people internationally to
participate in W3C work" in 2.1 means. I have some editorial comments
(pushed lower in this message).

>   * Whether the comparison table is useful; how to improve it, what's  
> missing, and so on.

The table is quite useful; it would probably be useful to highlight what
are the things that are still to be defined, since that's the places
where we need concrete input as soon as possible. Also, I'm not sure if
you're interested in feedback on the proposed items for the new
processes or not (that wasn't part of your question); I'm sending it in
any case :)

I think "copyright commitments" probably has more dimensions that just
the license under which the documents get published.

I'm not sure if the so-called "new idea forum" is anything more than
www-talk? If so, and given that most of the lines in the table are N/A,
I'm not sure it's really worth keeping in.

I think the "mostly boilerplate" allusion for the charter of W3C
community groups should be removed; if anything should disappear from a
lightweight charter, it should be the boilerplate. My view is that a
group's charter explains to the world what the group is working on, and
helps the group stay focus on a reduced set of topics; I think that
remains useful no matter the type of the group; but it may be that the
charter should not be a prerequisite to start the work, and that it in
fact be one of the first work items of the group.

"Creation time" hides several aspect: approval/review time, but also
infrastructure set up, chartering discussions (among creators) [which
themselves would likely need an infrastructure], IPR commitments, etc;
they probably need to be highlighted separately. Maybe the table in
general should distinguish between what is requested from would-be group
creators, and what is requested from a W3C side.

"Approval required": if a chartered group is responsible for approval,
it probably needs to be provided with a set of criteria, which I guess
this task force should at least start drafting; is a PigML WCG OK? is a
WCG on political topics OK? is a WCG on whale fishing OK? Getting any
kind of review in less than one business day is going to be hard, no
matter what. I think that again, there is probably a need to distinguish
various approval/review steps (one is about getting some basic
infrastructure e.g. to discuss a potential charter which should probably
granted very freely and in almost no time, start working on a concrete
spec, etc; another is reviewing/announcing a charter once it solidifies,
gathering IPR commitments, etc.)

"Charter duration" says no for community group, but then "conditions for
closing" say "may close if there is a chartered expiration"; that seems
inconsistent. I think in general if there is any requirement set on the
group (as there seems to be — at least the reporting requirement), there
should probably be a form of expiration mechanism; I guess making the
extension/renewal mechanism very lightweight would be sufficient to keep
that process agile enough.

"Consensus-building requirement" is ambiguous: is it inside the group,
or for the group with the rest of the world?
This actually opens a different question that probably need to be
raised: who is allowed to join a WCG and when? can someone be refused
from joining a group? can someone be ejected from a group?

HTH,

Dom

-----
Comments on objectives:
* I don't think disassociating the participation with the revenue model
is an objective as such; it seems more like a way to lower the cost of
participation
* in 2.1, bullet 3, rather than "straightforward" (which is likely
over-promising), I would say "well-defined".
* making W3C operations scalable is again a mean, not a goal; the goal
is to make it possible for groups to function smoothly with
independence, while still providing support to ...
* offering useful tools is again a mean; the goal is to make W3C a
better collaborative space for spec dev, etc

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2010 08:59:53 UTC