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

> 
> 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”

Sorry, no.  We can lead horses to water, but if we write in the process that they need to drink, before we can do something, we put ourselves at their mercy.  Maybe I shouldn’t have to say it, but sometimes we produce specifications that are, well, fairly boring but necessary, and yet are well written.  They may well get the reaction “yes, this looks OK to me” from people reading them, and typically they won’t bother to communicate that back. They’ve got review, but we don’t have much evidence.

This phrase was carefully crafted to make sure that our only dependency is on things we can control.  I am not happy with changing it to be dependent on the outside world.

I suppose you could quibble that the “able to actually perform” [[ed, please don’t split infinitives unless it’s really needed]] doesn’t truly mean “and actually did perform” but most people will read it that way, and I don’t think we should be misleading.


> 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”

OK, seeking evidence of whether they occurred is not the same as seeking evidence that they 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,”

ok

> 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.”

The first sentence is why we require ‘wide review', whose objective is stated first: that we produce quality, reviewed, specs.  This second is an objective of the timing of review requests, and the alterations below seem to be objectives to encourage groups to ask for incremental review. From the point of view of the process, we don’t care whether the review was incremental or all at one go; we do care that review was requested in a timely fashion, where that means both that there was time to comment, and that comments received will not be dismissed as being “too late, we’ve already gone too far”.

Perhaps the section and requirement need to be explicitly for “wide and timely review”, and the existing text apply mostly to wide review, and a new paragraph added explaining timely 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
>  
>  

Dave Singer

singer@mac.com

Received on Tuesday, 18 November 2014 23:31:37 UTC