Re: [closed] pfps-15 Say anything quote

From: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: [closed] pfps-15 Say anything quote
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:58:16 +0000

> At 16:42 19/03/2003 -0500, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >The message that I received, accepting the comment as an issue, indicates
> >that the remedy that the RDF Core WG has decided on would consist of
> >letting the RDF Primer editor suggest a change to the RDF Primer.  I
> >believe that this response does not address the entirety of my comment.  I
> >am unaware of any other efforts that the RDF Core WG will be undertaking to
> >address the rest of my comment.  Therefore I have indicated that I believe
> >that the response does not address my comment to my satisfaction, and,
> >moreover, have provided one reason why.
> >
> >I am unaware of any part of the W3C process that requires me to measure the
> >acceptability of the response by a characterisation of my comments
> >determined by the RDF Core WG.  The RDF Core WG is, of course, free to make
> >their own determination of what I meant in my comments, and respond using
> >this determination, but I think that I am free to differ.
> 
> Peter,
> 
> I think I see a misunderstanding here.  I believe you think that because we 
> are asking you whether the WG's resolution of pfps-15 is satisfactory, we 
> are asking you whether all the issues you raised in the your initial 
> message and subsequent discussion have been dealt with to your satisfaction.
> 
> This may not be the case.
> 
> Let me explain how I would like this to work.  The process goes a little 
> like this:
> 
>    - the WG receives an email
> 
> it is not unusual for there to be several separarable comments in one 
> incoming email, nor for it to be unclear to the WG what exactly the comment 
> is about
> 
>    - the WG clarifies the comments in the email, raising a separate issue 
> for each comment which is recorded in the comments list at
> 
>    http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20030123-issues/
> 
>    this is the process of turning the incoming emails into specific 
> comments the wg can deal with and the list at that url is the master of 
> list individual issues the WG has to be concerned about.  If an issue is 
> not recorded in this list, then the WG have not recognised the issue.
> 
>    - the WG considers each comment on its list and responds individually 
> about each, asking the commentor whether that individual issue has been 
> dealt with satisfactorily.
> 
> You are saying that not all the points you raised in that email thread have 
> been dealt with.  So either we should be able to point to separate issues 
> for those points, or the process of clarification has failed and they have 
> been missed.
> 
> As part of the clarification process, you should have been satisfied that 
> all your comments had been capture in the comments list.  If that is not 
> the case, please could you identify those aspects which have been missed.
> 
> Brian


I believe that this discussion points out a problem with the RDF Core WG
issue resolution process.  The RDF Core WG has chosen in several cases to
divide a single comments concerning some aspect of the new RDF specification
or document*s* into several issues, for example one per possibly-affected document.
This may be of utility for the RDF Core WG, but is certainly not helpful to
commenters, for example when the commenter views the issue as one that
cuts across several documents.

This has happened here, where a single very short message on my part
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2003JanMar/0148.html
has resulted in an email thread that has brought in sections of, at least,
Primer, Concepts, Syntax, and Schema.  This has resulted in at least two
issue ids, pfps-15 and pfps-23.  I do not view these as separate issues, so
the resolution of one is not sufficient for anything without a resolution
of the other.

The situation here is even more difficult for me as the message pointed to
from pfps-15 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2003JanMar/0194.html
is a long message that mentions much more than Primer.  From this
information how can I determine the scope that the RDF Core WG has assigned
to pfps-15?  For all I can know agreeing to the suggested change might be
agreeing that it is a complete solution for everything in the entire
thread.

I believe that responses from the RDF Core WG should thus indicate what the
RDF Core WG believes the issue to be.  Otherwise it will not be possible
for commenters to determine whether their concerns have been adequately
addressed.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research
Lucent Technologies

Received on Friday, 21 March 2003 09:25:41 UTC