Disposition of Comments and the Issue Tracking system

I had a two hour teleconference today with IanJ and ChrisL regards issue 
tracking.  Lots of things arose out of the discussion, but some 
important points need addressing fairly quickly:

   1. The collection of "User Positions" needs to be modified to be more
      consistent with what the Director expects. While what that is
      *exactly* is currently under development at the W3C, one list (as
      can be seen in
      http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile12/lc3-replies-public.html) includes
      Agree, Discuss, Compromise, and Disagree.  I plan to include these
      in our tracking system immediately, mapping them into our existing
      values.  I also plan to add "Formally Object" for those situations
      where the commenter has requested their objection be conveyed to
      the Director.
   2. We need to color code the state of each comment in the Disposition
      of Comments document.  The colors in the document referenced above
      are pretty - I plan to steal them.  The DoC generation tool will
      use them automatically via a style sheet.
   3. The Disposition of Comments document needs to clearly state
      whether any substantive changes were made as a result of the
      review.  To that end, I plan on adding a flag to the database for
      tracking whether an issues changes were substantive or editorial.
   4. Our "states" need some explanation on the tracking system web
      site.  I will provide help documentation.
   5. It should be easier for end users to find their issues.  I will
      provide simple instructions for doing that.
   6. When issues are first added to the system, the submitter is sent
      an acknowledgment.  This ack is copied to the working group
      today.  In the future, this acknowledgment will also be sent to
      www-html-editor so that there is a formal record of it at the W3C.
   7. There is some concern about getting issues relayed from
      www-html-editor to the appropriate issue tracking system.  Going
      forward everything that isn't complete nonsense will be tracked as
      an issue, if only so we have a record of responding to it.
   8. Currently I am forwarding issues from www-html-editor into the
      appropriate issue tracking system.  This responsibility should
      really be shared so there is coverage when people are on holiday etc.
   9. Each tracking system has a public-facing e-mail address.  This
      means that there is a lot of random spam coming into the systems. 
      If there were some way to restrict that either by 1) putting a
      human in the loop, or 2) running it through some forwarder that
      requires submitters to agree to have their content made public, it
      would eliminate the spam.  Can anyone volunteer to assist with this?

That's all for now.

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Saturday, 7 April 2007 03:26:02 UTC