Re: Testing and Web+TV (was: Re: Testing and WebMob

Hi Philipp,

Thanks for the update, see my comments inline.

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 12:16 AM, Philipp Hoschka <ph@w3.org> wrote:
>
> At the workshop, people agreed that testing continues to be important,
and that it would be ideal to have a common solution for all HTML based
products. A number of outstanding issues were identified, in particular
that more information is needed on what is already ongoing, how it could be
made suitable for the TV industry, and how to create more test cases for
the TV industry.
>
> The conclusion was that the Web+TV IG should revive its Testing Task
Force  to
> - look at the existing tools and material
> - see if they are suitable for the TV industry
> - if not, work to address the missing features

Great to hear renewed interest for testing from the TV industry. By no
means did I suggest renewed interest, work, resources, etc., weren't
welcome. I just reacted to Bryan's suggestion to "shepherd" the testing
effort through a process-orientated structure (e.g. a W3C IG). As I
explained, this is terribly misguided. The testing effort is now an
engineer-driven open source project led by its contributors, mostly
engineers from browser vendors. It's operational model could be described
as a consensus-seeking do-ocracy. Top-down attempts to "shepherd" it will
not only fail but also risk driving key contributors away. On the other
hand, contributions in code, documentation or resources of any kind that
respect the spirit of the project will be warmly welcomed. That's the only
meaningful and effective way to contribute to this project and get it to
fulfill currently unmet requirements.

> Also, it was suggested to organize a "Test the Web Forward" event
focusing on TV.

The TV industry's plug fests (at least the ones I've been invited to) are
very similar culture-wise to TestTWF events. I'm sure this could be very
successful but will need lots of prep work. Thankfully, there's good
documentation on how to host your own TestTWF event (
http://testthewebforward.org/events/#host)  dedicated kits and a dedicated
mailing list (public-testtwf-planning@w3.org).

> So expect more questions of "newbies" in the future - based on reading
the thread, it might be a useful first step for someone (e.g. TV IG,
Testing Open Source Effort) to document "how to get involved" somewhere.

There's a lot of quality documentation on the TestTWF website (
http://testthewebforward.org/docs/), links to the different projects and
their contribution guides (
http://testthewebforward.org/docs/open-source.html), and communication
channels through which to ask questions (
http://testthewebforward.org/discuss.html).

The best part? testthewebforward.org is itself an open-source project to
which you can contribute. Guidelines can be found on the contribution guide
previously linked. And an "Edit on GitHub" button is available directly
within the documentation section to simplify editing even more

At this point, I think it is not inadequate to suggest that the testing
effort needs more doing and less talking. Despite strong interest expressed
by both the mobile and TV industries, their concrete contributions to the
project so far have remained completely insignificant (except, of course,
for those that are also implementors). I'm very much concerned that unless
there are changes in the way this effort is approached, this will stay the
case for the foreseeable future.

Best,

--tobie