Re: Call for Editors for Server-sent Events, Web Storage, and Web Workers

Hi, Ian-

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear that we hope to keep you on as co-editor, 
if you are willing and able.

I simply don't have time (nor, frankly, am I interested) in having a 
political or philosophical debate about what an editor is or isn't, or 
what makes a spec stable, or whether W3C is structured in the right way 
to meet any given aim.  That conversation would distract and detract 
from the pragmatic goal of finding additional co-editors for these specs.

We are not looking for someone to do mere "secretarial work", we are 
looking for people with a stated interest to work within the W3C process 
to move these specs along the W3C Recommendation track at a timely pace. 
  Helping coordinate test suites is part of that, as is making changes 
to the spec based on requirements, implementation experience, and 
working group decisions.


So, I repeat: anyone interested in helping co-edit these specs, please 
contact the chairs or myself, or say so on this list.

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG, WebApps, and Web Events WGs


Ian Hickson wrote (on 12/13/10 6:05 PM):
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, Doug Schepers wrote:
>>
>>  Ian, the Technical Report work is what W3C does.
>
> I'm not sure how to interpret this. Do you mean that's the work W3C staff
> does? Or that's the work that the consortium is set up to foster? Neither
> is presumably true: W3C staff aren't the ones who do the TR busywork,
> since otherwise you wouldn't be asking for an editor to do it, and the
> goal of the consortium is hopefully not to publish TR/ drafts, it's
> presumably to get interoperability on the Web.
>
>
>>  You stated that you aren't interested in TR work [1], and that you are
>>  fine with having someone "take the draft and regularly publish a REC
>>  snapshot of it for patent policy purposes" [2]... and that's what an
>>  editor does.
>
> If that's what you're looking for, my apologies. That was not how I
> interpreted your e-mail. It's certainly not what the term "editor" means
> in general, though. What you describe is more of a secretarial role.
>
>
>>  I'm not sure what other way to move forward.
>
> It's not clear to me that your definition of "forward" makes sense. :-)
>
>
>>  I have been asked to move these specs along more rapidly, and I think
>>  that's a reasonable request.
>
> Publishing on the TR/ page does nothing to move the specs in any
> direction, let alone forward.
>
>
>>  Our expectation is that the specs will reach a stable state more quickly
>>  with an additional editor who can dedicate themselves more exclusively
>>  to the task.
>
> Publishing on the TR/ page does nothing for stability. The most productive
> work one could do to help the stability of these specs is writing test
> suites for them.
>
>
> Anyway, I'm fine if someone wants to do the secretarial work of publishing
> the spec on the TR/ page -- if anyone wants to help with that I'm more
> than happy to work with them to get that done on a regular basis. It's
> very easy work.
>
> More useful, however, would be someone to drive a test suite. I'd be very
> happy to help someone with that too, but that's much more work.
>

Received on Monday, 13 December 2010 23:33:13 UTC