Re: [Pubrules] Proposed changes regarding references to editors' drafts

On 04/04/2014 04:23, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> Something I've wanted to do for a while now is drop Editor's
> altogether and instead point to the contributor statistics for a
> specification. That gives a more fair view of who did what, doesn't
> discriminate (if you did something, you are listed. Period.) - and
> stops people free-riding.



I think it would be a mistake (and certainly unacceptable in the Math
WG) to tie the notion of "contributor" to a list which (if I understand
correctly what you mean by the link to the github page) that is
mechanically constructed from people who actually edit the file.

One reason for having a working group and telecons and face to face
meetings and email discussion is to get technical contributions from the
whole group, including in particular people for whom English is not
their first language and may not feel comfortable suggesting final
public text. It's the Editors job to filter all the discussion through
into the final text, but that doesn't mean that the initial input should
not be recognised.

In the MathML spec we have (in every release going back to mathml 1.0
back in 1998) had two lists in the front matter: one of "Editors" and
one of "Principal Authors" (which now includes the Editors) and
then separately in an appendix at the back we list Working Group members
and non-working group contributors.

None of these lists (except Working Group Members) could be constructed
automatically by consulting any logs.


David

Received on Friday, 4 April 2014 08:48:12 UTC