Re: WOWG: Documents to review (all members - deadlines included)

From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: WOWG: Documents to review (all members - deadlines included)
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 12:06:04 -0500

> At 17:37 +0100 12/30/02, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
> >On 24 Dec 2002, Jim Hendler wrote:
> >>  WE ARE ASKING TO HAVE ALL REVIEWS DONE BY Jan 2!!
> >
> >Much too little review time, particularly for those of us blessed with
> >seasonal holidays.
> >
> >>  Apologies that this falls during the winter (summer in the Southern
> >>  Hemisphere) break, but it is necessary for us to meet our Last Call
> >>  calendar
> >
> >Conclusion the calendar is too aggressive.
> >
> >>  Only those changed sections will be open for review/discussion at the
> >>  face to face
> >
> >Unacceptable.
> >
> >Any aspect of the documents including omissions (which may have no associated
> >section) should be up for discussion in the f2f before last call.
> >
> >Also such a restriction permits editors to unilaterally to ignore review
> >comments; and then the ignored comments are excluded from the agenda?
> >
> >Given the tightness of the review deadline it seems more appropriate to allow
> >late comments in a fairly unrestricted fashion.
> >
> >Since I suspect this is the first time that many of us are reviewing our
> >documents together as a collection I suspect that there will be cross
> >document issuettes and unclarities. I find the syntactic restrictions on OWL
> >Lite and OWL DL to be one of them: the only documents that are clear that a
> >single triple ( <a> <p> "v" . ) is not OWL Lite are the mapping part of
> >semantics and Test Cases. This is not listed anywhere as a change from
> >Daml+Oil, despite it being one that has significant practical impact.
> >
> >I suspect we need some process for tracking such issuettes.
> >
> >The process currently being followed will result in many last call issues. A
> >last call issue is significantly more administrative work than a prelast call
> >issue. If the WG wishes to have such work then so be it, but I suggest that
> >it would be better to improve our docs before last call.
> >
> >Jeremy
> 
> Jeremy-
>   we appreciate the deadlines, but it's not like we haven't been 
> pointing out for a long time that this was coming, and all our docs 
> went out in pre-LC WDs long enough ago (and comments and reviews have 
> been solicited all along).  The issues you bring up do need to be 
> addressed, but don't necessarily need the time of the whole WG - many 
> of them are best dealt with in high bandwidth communication between 
> reviewer and editor - which the f2f agenda has been designed to 
> facilitate.
>   Also, the comments we've asked to have finalized by Jan 2 are the 
> comments on the documents themselves -- the identification of 
> "cracks" between the documents and the fixes thereto will be 
> addressed at the f2f, again, one hopes without the need of everyone 
> in the WG working on each of them.    There will be plenary time for 
> any "major" issues that come up (and the one you've brought up about 
> Lite/DL will likely be one of those).
>   The deadlines we're looking at could be movable, but we;d prefer to 
> shoot at what we have -- again, we're up against process deadlines 
> and while delays are possible, they also add risk.
>   Please, please try to get your comments on the record before Jan 2 - 
> any comments raised by then (such as the one you mention above) must 
> be dealt w/by the editors before we would approve LC, but we have to 
> have some finite limit, or we will never be done until the language 
> is "perfect" - an unachievable goal.
>   So we'd like to stick with what we have, and do our best
>   JH

It does not appear that the chairs of the Working Group do appreciate
Jeremy's comments, so I'm going to make the point more clearly.

The message requesting reviews will only be read AFTER the deadline (or,
maybe, on the last day) by many members of the working group.  In fact,
this is the only year of the last 10 or so where I would have been able to
perform any reviews during the review period, and only the second year of
the last 10 or so where I would have even been able to read the message
before the end of the review period.  I therefore request the working group
chairs to put an item in the agenda of the teleconference of 2 January 2003
to discuss the particular issue of them requesting reviews without
sufficient notice.  I also request that the working group chairs put an
item on the agenda of the teleconference of 2 January 2003 to discuss the
working group schedule.

Schedules are made to be broken.  Yes, it is a good idea to keep to a
schedule, but when a schedule becomes unrealistic it is better to change
the schedule than to eliminate or reduce vital steps in the process.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research
Lucent Technologies

Received on Tuesday, 31 December 2002 09:05:06 UTC