Re: The Standards Manifesto

At 14:05 -0500 2002-05-22, Aaron Swartz wrote:
>>Aaron... tss tss... I have read ***w3t***, so you are talking about 
>>the W3C Team. So the 70 persons who are employed by W3C. I'm one of 
>>those and we have not all of us the same ideas about the web, the 
>>community, or the standards process.
>
>You are certainly right. My point was simply that I didn't see team 
>members using their power to ensure specs remained simple and so 
>forth. And I can certainly understand their hands-off approach, it's 
>simply not what I would prefer.

bbbrrrrr.... a shiver is running on my back. You talked about 
openness, more participation and the first solution you propose is a 
dicatorial one. We don't have power, and I hope no people will have 
power, or at least not a unique power. The Team is doing a great job. 
I'm working at W3C for just 2 years and the quality of people here is 
great, really great! This whole team is working a lot, do not have 
big salaries, is trying to make the Web to its full potential.

Becoming someone from the team is a difficult decision to take, 
because it's always a question of choices. Let say I am an idealist: 
what should be my decision, try to work inside W3C if I can help on 
things avoid that weird things happened etc. or stay outside and 
grumbling. The problem is when you are getting inside W3C, you will 
have the community bashing you because you are inside.

[And Simon... it's not a question of hapiness, you're totally wrong]

so please no assumptions on the Team and people of the Team, if you 
want to have a clear arguments about W3C.
	Talk about Specs quality, WGs work, etc... about the real 
issues, but not about the work of things.

>>So is the problem the consortium or a too small consortium and not 
>>enough representative of the Web Community?
>
>I think the problem is that we have a consortium at all. Let the 
>programmers and researchers sit and work out a specification that 
>they believe in. Then the Big Companies and the consortia can 
>"standardize" it later.

???? Why they don't do it. W3C is not the only place where 
standardization is happening... Just do it :p (to take the words of a 
BigCo).

Other organisms: Web3D, GeoML, OASIS, IETF, ISO, The Grid, individual 
people. The creation of things is already done outside. So why you 
don't set a group and go with it.
	Some people try to standardize for example weblogs API
	http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblog-devel/

	RSS 1.0 has been produced outside W3C.
	http://www.purl.org/rss/1.0/

so it's still possible to create things.

Ooopsss I have forgotten, The W3C is not a perfect place. ;) but....

Now let be productive and define a way of working, how to manage all 
these things?
*****************
- WG to work on a spec
- Tutorials / Education & Outreach
- WAI, I18N, DI, Digital Divide
- Translations
- Certification?
- Patents dealing (except if you are in Europe :p)
- Test Suites
- Implementations/Quality
******************


-- 
Karl Dubost / W3C - Conformance Manager
           http://www.w3.org/QA/

      --- Be Strict To Be Cool! ---

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2002 16:44:10 UTC