Re: better process for fixing problems in W3C recommendations

Interesting you say this.  The Advisory Board has been discussing this for a while, and noting our very patchy approach to collecting and documenting errata, and the clear need to do better and be more consistent.

It should be easy
a) to report a problem
b) to see all reported problems that the WG agrees are errata
c) to see all problems the WG has not yet categorized or addressed

> On Jun 24, 2016, at 1:31 , Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> W3C recommendations have problems.  Unfortunately fixing these problems is
> very problematic.  I suggest that W3C community groups be able, and
> encouraged, to submit reports pointing out problems in relevant W3C
> recommendations and providing errata for these problems.  These reports would
> then be reviewed and, if approved, made into normative errata for the
> recommendation.
> 
> This process should be restricted to cases where there is a clear problem in
> the recommendation, i.e., either there is some formal error, such as illegal
> structures being created or functions applied outside of their domain, or
> multiple implementations differ from the recommendation.  Part of the review
> process would be to ensure that there was adequate involvement of interested
> parties, particularly implementors of the recommendation and members of the
> working group that produced the recommendation.
> 
> 
> Why is this a good time to establish this new process?  The W3C Data Shapes
> working group is building SHACL on top of SPARQL.  Parts of SPARQL that it
> heavily uses have problems.  It would be much better if a resultant
> recommendation for SHACL could normatively depend on SPARQL as modified by the
> fixes that have been approved by W3C instead of saying that SHACL depends on
> SPARQL with some set of changes, which would in essence fork the definition of
> SPARQL within W3C.  The RDF Tests Suite Curation Community Group would be a
> good group to handle errata for SPARQL, although it would also be possible to
> set up a new group specifically to address problems that are currently known
> in the SPARQL recommendations.
> 
> 
> Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> 

Dave Singer

singer@mac.com

Received on Friday, 24 June 2016 08:13:33 UTC