RE: Is the TAG structure harmful? [Was: Fwd: Forced Resignation]

I don't think I would stop participating. However I am leery of a drive to get us to move things along the W3C Process track, including its many instantly-obsolete snapshots. Right now we mostly publish things on GitHub and evolve them continually. I imagine the two publication-hacks you mention will start generating insta-obsolete Process artifacts soon, which is a shame, and perhaps we can try to avoid or mitigate it.

Speaking for myself, I would need any work I do in the TAG to be published only as an Editors Draft, or in some other unofficial non-REC-track form. This might be fine, as so far at least my work (promises guide, spec reviews, some initial work on a design principles document) has been focused on guidance that I believe can be categorized as non-normative.

________________________________________
From: Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 10:50
To: www-tag@w3.org
Cc: www-archive@w3.org
Subject: Is the TAG structure harmful? [Was: Fwd: Forced Resignation]

[ Bcc public-w3process ]

On the one hand, as long as some set of TAG participants are elected by
Members, I suspect some see (marginal?) value in limiting the number of
participants from an organization. OTOH, I think Consortium processes
actually retard the growth of the Web when those processes prohibit or
limit willing and capable people from directly contributing to Web
standards.

I realize at least some (small?) set of TAG members have a personal
preference to work in a small group (and of course there are some
advantages to doing so), but besides the issue with the current
structure restricting the set of qualified participants, I think the
TAG's current structure is suboptimal for a number of other reasons.
Here are some of them, and I believe all of them could be addressed by
the group being a `real` Working Group.

* Publication hacks - since the TAG apparently can't publish `real`
Recommendations, they get WGs to publish their specs (NB: WebApps' draft
charter includes two specs that are being led by TAG participants and
proposed to be jointly published
<http://www.w3.org/2014/06/webapps-charter.html#coordination>).

* Term limits - as the group does more and more spec work, having a
2-year limit  can be disruptive to the completion of a document.

* Voting - instead of spending time and energy on voting, we could
divert that energy to getting the `best` people involved and actually
doing work.

* Charter with clear scope and deliverables.

* IP clarity - extending IP commitments to the participants'
organization (rather than the individuals) would be clearer and broader
and this is especially important as the group produces `real`
Recommendations.

* Eliminate a 1-off group - using a WG structure would simplify the
Process Document (i.e. eliminate all text related to the TAG).

TAG members - would any of you stop participating in your areas of
interest of this group was a Working Group?

-AB


-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Forced Resignation
Resent-Date:    Mon, 30 Jun 2014 12:51:15 +0000
Resent-From:    www-tag@w3.org
Date:   Mon, 30 Jun 2014 05:50:17 -0700
From:   Alex Russell <slightlyoff@google.com>
To:     www-tag@w3.org List <www-tag@w3.org>
CC:     www-archive <www-archive@w3.org>, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>,
Chris Wilson <cwilso@google.com>, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>, Jeff Jaffe
<jeff@w3.org>



Hi all,

As you may know, Google recently had the good sense and taste to hire
fellow TAG member Dominic Denicola. W3C rules insist that, despite being
/individually elected/ as representatives of the membership, our
employment situation is more important to the membership than our
capacity to make meaningful contributions at the TAG. Therefore one of
us must resign.

As my term ends soonest, I will be stepping down from my position so
that Dominic can continue the good work of helping to encourage
extensibility in the web platform. I will, however, continue to attend
meetings through the end of my elected term (Jan '15) in protest of
what, frankly, is appallingly poor organizational design. Evidence of
this piles up: last year we also lost productive TAG members to vagaries
of employment interaction with W3C policy.

If the AB's goal with this misbegotten policy were to prevent multiple
individuals from a firm from influencing the TAG's decisions, I invite
them to bar me from meetings post my removal. Were it not so, I invite
them to change the policy.

Regards

Received on Monday, 30 June 2014 15:04:45 UTC