TAG member-only discussion of ISSUE-571

I've become aware that some members of the community are concerned about 
the fact that the subject of today's TAG discussion on RDFa and microdata 
is a note [1] that is in our member-only email archives.

The TAG does the vast majority of its work "in public" on this list, and 
the draft minutes of our most recent discussion of RDFa and microdata are 
indeed public at [2]. During that discussion, we asked Jeni Tennison to 
prepare a first draft of what >might< become formal positions of the TAG on 
this matter. We occasionally put even such first drafts in public, but 
there is a downside: they look and feel like considered positions of the 
TAG, and particularly on matters of great controversy, we wind up with 
people holding us to positions that aren't necessarily ours, and indeed 
that may not have been well researched. So, when the TAG is considering 
taking a formal public position, or opening an issue against someone else's 
specification, it's often appropriate to first let all TAG members look at 
the proposal, and to refine it to the point where it at least represents 
the input of the TAG to the public discussion.

That's what's going on here. We have a teleconference for technical 
discussion of this today, and it's my hope that the TAG will have something 
suitable for public consideration (or else a decision not to take a 
position) soon. Either way, I expect we'll move the discussion to www-tag 
very shortly.

A reminder about the tag@w3.org list: it's like the chairs@w3.org list. All 
W3C members can see these lists, but the purpose of them is for discussion 
among the TAG or chairs, etc. Things we put here may include positions we 
are not prepared to defend, technical analyses that have not been seen by 
more than one TAG member, scheduling discussion about future TAG meetings 
etc. The www-tag@w3.org list is, of course, fully public and we welcome 
contributions from everyone.

Again: the TAG takes its commitment to work in public very seriously. When 
we do take initial steps among ourselves, it is typically to be sure that 
we know what we want our initial public position to be, as is the case 
here. Thank you.

Noah



[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/tag/2011Jun/0021.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2011/06/08-minutes.html#item06

Received on Thursday, 16 June 2011 15:34:44 UTC