RE: Issue-144 Suggested updates to clarify Wide Review in Process2014

See inline below
Steve Zilles

From: Jeff Jaffe [mailto:jeff@w3.org]
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 5:43 AM
To: Stephen Zilles; public-w3process@w3.org
Cc: Michael Champion (Michael.Champion@microsoft.com)
Subject: Re: Issue-144 Suggested updates to clarify Wide Review in Process2014

Steve,

These are all great suggestions, but do not address a part of the Issue.

Chairs are also looking for a means to make it more routine - e.g. a standard list to send documents - and the team has responded with such a list.

I think we need to add comments about such a list.  For example, we could add a sentence of the form: "W3C has create a list public-review-announce@w3.org<mailto:public-review-announce@w3.org> which Chairs might want to use as a component of wide review.  Merely posting to this list, without ensuring that actual reviews have been done, however, would not be sufficient by itself to achieve wide review."
[SZ] Actually, I did consider the announcement list when I was proposing the changes to Wide Reivew. Because such announcements are optional, I did not see a need to put the existence of the list in the Process (which is mostly MUSTs and SHOULDs). I am not, however, opposed to adding a pointer to the list. I think, however, that modifying the first sentence phrase, "have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group and ..." TO "have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group (for example, using public-review-announce@w3.org<mailto:public-review-announce@w3.org>) and ..." would be a better solution. The issue of sufficiency is address elsewhere in the suggested modification.


Jeff

On 11/15/2014 2:22 PM, Stephen Zilles wrote:
With respect to Issue 144, there was a discussion in a break out session at TPAC 2014[1] that noted that Wide Review was updated in Process 2014 to better insure that (1) reviews by a wide audience actually occurred versus just being announced and (2) reviews were undertaken early enough, when individual sections became stable, that comments and suggested changes could and would be incorporated where they were appropriate. It was observed that the current text of section 7.2.3.1 Wide Review [2] does not do a very good job of making these objectives clear. The following changes to the first paragraph of 7.2.3.1 are suggested to clarify these objectives.

Process2014 text:
===============
7.2.3.1 Wide Review
The requirements for wide review are not precisely defined by the W3C Process. The objective is to ensure that the entire set of stakeholders of the Web community, including the general public, have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group and thereby an opportunity to comment on the specification. Before approving transitions, the Director will consider who has been explicitly offered a reasonable opportunity to review the document, who has provided comments, the record of requests to and responses from reviewers, especially groups identified as dependencies in the charter, and seek evidence of clear communication to the general public about appropriate times and which content to review.
=============
Four changes are proposed:

1.      Change the following phrase in the first sentence of the paragraph, "and thereby an opportunity to comment on the specification" TO "and were able to actually perform reviews of and provide comments on the specification"

2.      Change the final phrase of the second sentence of the paragraph, "and seek evidence of clear communication to the general public about appropriate times and which content to review" TO "and seek evidence of clear communication to the general public about appropriate times and which content to review and whether such reviews actually occurred"

3.      Change the initial phrase of the second sentence of the paragraph, "the Director will consider who has been explicitly offered a reasonable opportunity to review the document," to "the Director will consider who has been explicitly offered a reasonable opportunity to review the document, when those offers were made,"

4.      Following the first sentence, ending with "opportunity to comment on the specification", add the following sentence, "A second objective is to encourage groups to request reviews early enough that comments and suggested changes may still be reasonably incorporated in response to the review."
OR
"A second objective is to encourage Groups to seek early review of those portions of the document that have become stable enough to allow meaningful review, being careful to identify which portions those are in the review request."
OR
"A second objective is to encourage Groups to seek early review of identified portions of the document that have become stable enough to allow meaningful review."

OR

A second objective is to encourage Groups to seek early, incremental review of identified portions of the document that are stable enough for meaningful review but are still flexible enough to allow incorporation of comments and suggested changes where that is appropriate."

[1] https://www.w3.org/wiki/TPAC2014/SessionIdeas#What_is_Wide_Review_and_How_do_we_achieve_it
[2] http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#wide-review

Received on Monday, 17 November 2014 04:53:45 UTC