Hi all,
I know some of these have been raised and are 'in process', but the process
appears to be moving slowly.
The following are some suggestions that I think would provide easier
collaboration between the PF and other working groups and contributors at
the W3C. Note: these suggestions are personal and are not intended to
represent the views of my employer
Public-PF mailing list [1]: allow non PF members to post to the list. We
have had situations in the past where members of the TAG (and other working
groups) have been unable to respond to technical discussion occuring on the
public PF list. This has lead to loss of technical input on important
accessibility related developments.
PF issue tracker [2]: Allow anyone to read the issue tracker if the work
of the group occurs in public space there is no need to have the issue
tracker in member only space. Anybody that is not a member of the PF who
wants to follow a particular issue cannot currently, this is an impedement
to collaboration and development.
Recommend the primary method of public & inter WG comment be via bugs filed
on the various sepcifications, this makes tracking and responding to
technical issues raised easier for the people doing the technical work.
WAI-liason list [3]: This list appears to consist primarliy of responses to
PF comments on other WG specifications (which reside in the public space),
yet this list is in member only space, it does not make sense.
PF meeting minutes: remove the unecessary step of scrubbing the minutes and
only making them public after a preiod of time, it is in general a waste of
WG member and W3C staff time. If on the rare occasion the meetings cotain
sensitive information ask those at the meeting if they request an
opportunity to scrub prior to release.
Move all specs produced by PF to the 2014 process [4]
Take advantage of the new W3C publishing tools [5] that are being made
avialable, these tools can vastly reduce the amound of time spec editors
and w3c staff have to spend in producing working drafts.
De-politicise the publication process, I have experienced on a number of
occasions, the situation where specs i work on have been held up due to
backroom wrangling even though there has been clear public member consensus
to publish. Heartbeat publications in particular should be as painless and
beurocracy free as possible, this will free up time for all involved.
I am a PF member but largely work outside of the PF space because other
working groups allow me to get on with the technical work without undue
constraints.
[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg/
[2] https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/
[3] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/wai-liaison/
[4] http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/
[5] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2015JanMar/0026.html
--
Regards
SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>