Re: Participation in good standing

Joe,
Are you confusing the smoke with the fire?
that is who cares whether one's in good standing, members know who the 
regular contributors are.
Don't let's worry that the smoke gets all the attention.

BTW, have you ever visited a turd world country?
They spend hours polishing turds:

Many years ago I was  a youth staying up in the hills above Manali in 
India.
I asked the landlady for a mat, the bed-cots were rather uncomfortable.
She in her kindness cleaned the floor and polished it with cow dung.
This continued every day for a month or two.....

Like the South American tea, I later discovered that mat means 
different things to different people.
She just assumed I was a very fussy tenant.

thanks

On Monday, December 15, 2003, at 10:35  pm, Joe Clark wrote:

>
> The Web Accessibility Initiative remains unable to see that:
>
> 1. the PiGS designation (participant in good standing) is inherently
> elitist and filters out anyone who cannot afford the time or money for 
> up
> to 150 hours a year of long-distance telephone consultations and
> face-to-face meetings. It is a method of *reducing* public 
> participation.
>
> 2. an effort to impose PiGS requirements now is a convenient yet
> suspicious method to limit participation in WCAG WG or Techniques WG or
> any other working group. It is inherently contrary to the aims of the
> Initiative, since it ensures that nobody but sinecurists with day 
> jobs--
> who are the existing WAI politburo anyway-- will ever be allowed to
> contribute.
>
> 3. you can't polish a turd. Wendy's response--
>
>> At Wednesday's meeting we discussed that if someone had to attend both
>> the  techniques task force telecon *and* the WCAG WG telecon *and* 
>> keep up
>> on  the mailing list, the minimum 4 hours of time expected to 
>> contribute
>> (per our charter) would be eaten up without doing any real
>> work.  Therefore, it seems to make sense that a person could 
>> participate in
>> either the task force telecons or the WCAG WG telecons to be 
>> considered a
>> participant in good standing.  However, we want to make sure that we 
>> are
>> not running two separate groups.  The task force is not publishing 
>> its own
>> documents, it is working on documents for the WCAG WG.  Keeping the 
>> two
>> groups in synch is key and overlapping participation helps.
>
> -- is predicated on *keeping the proposed PiGS requirement*. We are not
> talking about somewhat-more-palatable methods to meet the PiGS
> requirements. I am telling you up front, as I have explained already, 
> that
> such a requirement *is the problen*.
>
> 4. WAI is acting as though there is something resembling agreement to
> impose this requirement. The hastily-added proviso that it's all being
> "discussed" does not eliminate the impression that it's a backroom deal
> that's gonna be rammed through whether anyone likes it or not. The
> existing WAI politburo, who are all WAI staff or PiGS anyway, obviously
> will like the idea, because it doesn't affect them except inasmuch as 
> it
> solidifies the class structure of the Initiative. A requirement for 
> PiGS
> status keeps the riffraff out. And if you think I'm worried only about
> myself, wait till I count up all the participants on the GL list who 
> would
> be excluded by this requirement.
>
> *Throw out the plan*. There is nothing broken with the current
> participation methods that needs fixing, and the cure is worse than the
> disease.
>
> This is an epochal decision that WAI seems to be laughing off. Screw 
> this
> up and it's gonna blow up in your faces. You will kneecap the entire 
> Web
> Content Accessibility Guidelines. If you thought you didn't have enough
> WCAG proponents working to improve the Guidelines as it is, wait till 
> you
> start turning boosters into enemies. Becaus that is what's gonna 
> happen.
>
> --
>
>   Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
>   Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
>   <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>
>
>
Jonathan Chetwynd
http://www.peepo.co.uk
"A web by people with learning difficulties"

Received on Tuesday, 16 December 2003 18:03:01 UTC