RE: Transition to a revised Technical Report Development Process [W3Process-ISSUE-39, W3Process-ACTION-10, proposal]

David raises a point that I don't recall the AB thinking very hard about:  People OUTSIDE the WGs need clear guidance about when to seriously review drafts.  We've tended to think that since WGs operate in public, the people outside the WG who care about a spec can read it,so they will read it as it evolves.  David reminds us that the noise level is so high unless one follows closely, it's not clear when it's REALLY ready for a wide review round.

What we did consider are a couple of points:
- The LC and CR signals in the current process tend to happen these days after specs are widely implemented and what might sound like constructive suggestions (e.g., "the names aren't very intuitive") are made too late to be helpful.
- The spirit of all these proposed reforms is to allow WGs and their chairs to make context-appropriate decisions about when and how to do things like ask for wide review.  Likewise the process forces seemingly arbitrary transitions back to WD and then forward to LC or CR, and those transitions aren't necessarily useful signals to non-WG members.  I think we understand that this does put more of a responsibility on chairs, but hopefully more freedom for them to customize and optimize the workings of a group to meet its real constraints rather than having them dictated by the One True Process.



________________________________________
From: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 9:58 PM
To: Charles McCathie Nevile
Cc: Jeff Jaffe; Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH); Stephen Zilles; Ralph Swick; Advisory Board; W3C Process Community Group
Subject: Re: Transition to a revised Technical Report Development Process [W3Process-ISSUE-39,  W3Process-ACTION-10, proposal]

On Nov 5, 2013, at 19:54 , Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:27:08 +0100, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Nov 5, 2013, at 16:28 , Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>>
>>>> That's fine.  Just give people a name they can use (a consistent name) if they wish.
>>>
>>> How about "getting ready for LCCR"?
>>
>> a name for the *document* that they believe is their candidate.
>
> "Proposed Last Call draft"? "Editor's draft proposal for CR"? "The draft before the draft that will be proposed as CR"? "Working Draft that seems to resolve all known open issues but needs a linkcheck before we propose it for CR"?
>
> I'm unclear why a working draft needs a particular name, and sceptical that adding such names to the process is helpful.

Because there are bewildering numbers of WDs from groups, most of them unreadable or not really ready for comment.  Something that says "ok guys. this might be half-readable" is a Nice Sign.

"Draft Proposal" or "Proposed Draft" would be fine, for example.


>
> The status section is there to clarify exactly where a document is up to, when it is between the clearly defined stages. And Working Groups are meant to be freer to determine how they want to handle the progression. Against that, I'd rather not define lots of stage names.

I think this is likely to leave us all in a bewildering variety of practices, and very hard to notice what's going on.  I want those notices from the W3C that such-and-such a group is asking for wider review, please.

>
> If there are clear requests based on multiple groups doing the same thing I think we should reconsider this question. I haven't seen that to date.

It's not INSIDE the groups that this is a problem.  It is for the Rest of Us.

>
> cheers
>
> chaals
>
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
>      chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 7 November 2013 06:49:02 UTC