Re: Week In QA

Jack,

At 06:03 PM 7/15/02 -0400, you wrote:

>Team
>  In going thru the mailing for the last month to genearte WeekInQA, I ran 
> into
>a couple of questions about what should be in versus out.

Yeah, these are good questions.   I haven't tried to write a week in qa, so 
I'm guessing.  But I'll take a stab at some answers.

Overall -- I think it's something of a judgement call what to include and 
what not.  Criterion:  "Would this item/topic be potentially interesting to 
an IG member, who was trying to following significant stuff in QA WG?"

>We discussed this a
>little, but I want to make sure I am clear on the level of detail we are 
>looking
>for. In the IG list there was not really anything discussed, except maybe
>Fashion Handbags and Hair accessories. That's easy. There is a lot on the WG
>list, but it falls into 4 catagories:
>
>  1) logistics
>  2) reports on status (like closing an AI)
>  3) individual comments (where there is only 1 item in the thread/subject)
>  4) discussions about various things (>1 mail item)
>
>My question is, what should be included ? #1 we agreed is not. #4 is (at 
>least
>to me) obviously in. What about #2 & #3 ? If WeekInQA is for summarizing
>"discussion",

IMO, it doesn't just have to be "discussion".  If someone write an 
interesting position or makes an interesting submission or reference, then 
it potentially should be mentioned.

>then 2 & 3 don't seem to fit, at least to me. Discussion usually
>means more than one person.
>
>As an example, if I JUST include #4, the first two weeks of July only have 3
>"discussions":
>
>(Proposal) Questonnaire to WG chairs on Specification Authoring
>Updated Test Guidelines draft - 0701
>Proposed split of Testing Checkpoint 4.6
>
>If I include #3, it probably adds:
>
>Process Document and Guidelines - Ongoing
>Encouraging a double review
>New SpecGuide discussion draft
>Suggested Changes to Testing Guidelines
>Testing Guidelines plan
>New checkpoints 15.1 & 15.2 for Spec guideline documents

I think these are potentially interesting.  But not "standalone".  E.g., 
you could combine 3rd and 6th.  Looking at the style of the last weekinqa,

http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/06/weekinqa-20020610,

there could be an item under "minor threads",

"Ongoing SpecGuide development

Continue WG development of WG discussion drafts of Spec Guidelines with a 
view towards August publication, items at [@@n] and [@@n+1]."

I'd lump these at the end under "Miscellaneous", and flag major threads at 
the beginning under "Principal discussion threads" or some such label.

Going further, the 2nd and 3rd items under your category #4 could be 
combined with the 5th and maybe the 4th (I say "maybe" because it is a 
detailed drafting contribution and might not be at all interesting out of 
context) of your category #3 in a brief paragraph (a few sentences) that 
pertains to and summarizes TestGL development topics, and might wrap up as 
follows:

"..., as well as some change proposals and specific detailed drafting 
contributions [@@m] and [@@m+1]."

I'm mostly thinking out loud here.  As I said, it's a judgement call and 
maybe the latter are too detailed or too obscure.

Anyone else have views on this?


>If I add #2 there are probably another 5-6 more, but it is unclear to me how
>important they would be to someone on the IG.

I think these -- e.g., closing an AI -- should be skipped.


>My sense is, that if we are trying to keep the IG informed then maybe #3 
>with a
>pointer to the thread and #4 with a summary and a pointer to the head of the
>thread would be best.

Yeah, that is similar to the idea I was thinking of above.


>?????
>
>This kind of brought another question to mind. If we decide that all the 
>stuff
>in 2 & 3 is important to the IG, could we use www-qa for discussion and
>www-qa-wg just for logistics & status ? JAT (just a thought)

(I think #2 is "clutter", and should not be flagged to the IG.)

It is something that we should keep in mind, and monitor as we try to 
implement better WG-IG communication, but I'd suggest that we don't try to 
make such a change yet.  Let's see how the rest of it works out for the 
next few weeks.

-Lofton.

Received on Tuesday, 16 July 2002 11:38:16 UTC