Re: Mailing ilst for review

At 08:53 05/03/04, Leslie Daigle wrote:

 >Appropriately, that is calling for a review of the template, not
 >a general discussion of URIs or the relative merits of pursuing
 >one direction or another.

I think there are a lot of middle grounds between discussing a scheme
proposal to death and checking off on a template. What I think a
valuable review ideally should provide would be things like:

- Pointers to already existing schemes if the author isn't aware of them,
   e.g. like
      comment: "hey, you might have a look at that other scheme there,
                might just be what you're trying to do"
      answer: "oh, thanks, didn't know, saves me a lot of work")
   This is valuable, and clearly different from what we had before,
   which in the extreme went like:
      comment: "you proposal is marginally similar to an already existing
                one, so please go away"
   or
      comment: "I'm trying to do something similar, but mine is better,
                and we can't possibly have two schemes in this same space."

- Comments on syntax, because conforming to the generic syntax isn't
   optional.

- Comments on the readability of the spec, just in case the author
   appreciates them.

I think based on the experience in the past years, there is quite
clear consensus that if oppinions on the merit of a scheme differs,
it should be registered. I hope that the registration draft in
some way can express this, while also making clear that registration
doesn't imply deployment.


 >So, you are proposing (implicitly) that the IETF ask the W3C URI IG to
 >carry out a review process for its (the IETF's) registration process.

I think that's not at all my understanding. My understading is that the
IETF (as a continuation of the old URL WG) and the W3C (now in the form
of an IG) share a common mailing list, based on the experience that this
is an important area of interest to both of these communities, and in
itself really just only one community. IETF business on that list is
IETF business. The IETF doesn't have to ask anybody about anything
regarding that list; the only service the W3C provides for IETF business
is the list maintainance and archival.

 >And I think that
 >
 >	1/ The W3C URI IG has other interesting things to do!

In the past, as far as I'm aware of, most input into general
discussions has come from specific scheme proposals. But it
might be only me seeing this that way.


 >	2/ Not every URI registrant should have to expose themselves
 >	   to that wide-ranging disscussion just to get their URI
 >	   scheme through IETF process, and

Is getting comments a problem? I think that we have to make
clear that addressing some comments is optional. If we are
going with with the uri-review list for review, I hope we
are doing this because we think that the problem of not getting
that many comments on that list can be fixed, not because we
think that that list is fine because of the low number of
comments.


 >	3/ The basic mechanics of the mailing lists may differ --
 >	   e.g., in terms of membership management policies, archiving,
 >	   etc.

W3C has hosted the uri list for the IETF for years. We have
occasionally changed details of the setup, mostly to avoid spam,
but I'm not aware of any change at all that we would have made
when the mailing list, in addition to being the list of the former
IETF URL WG, also became the list for the W3C URI IG.
If there is anything we did wrong before then, I appologize, and
please tell me what it is so that we can look into fixing it.


Regards,    Martin.

Received on Sunday, 6 March 2005 16:40:27 UTC