Tips for getting the TAG's attention

The purpose of the www-tag mailing list is:

1. for the TAG to conduct its technical discussion in public view, and
2. for the public to engage dialog with the TAG.

The TAG encourages public discussion of architecture issues. However, due to the sheer volume of email received, the TAG cannot guarantee that every issue raised on the list will be addressed.

The TAG does commit to the following (per 28 Jan 2002 teleconference):

• The TAG will respond to each request brought to it by a W3C Working Group.
• The TAG should respond to each request brought to it by an external organization.

Therefore, before you post to www-tag, you should consider the following alternatives:

• Is there another group within W3C that is more suited to address this issue? Check out the list of W3C mailing lists and list of W3C Activities.
• General discussion about the Web should take place on www-talk@w3.org.
• If you are responding to a posting on www-tag please consider:
  • Have you posted more than once already on the same thread on the same day? If so, give TAG members a chance to respond before posting again.
  • If the TAG are not engaged in the particular discussion, give serious consideration to the likelihood of your posting being ignored.

What can you do to improve your chances that the TAG will put an issue on their meeting agenda?

• First, review the mailing list and issues list to see whether your issue has already been addressed by the TAG.
• If the TAG has already put an issue on its issues list, and your comment is related to that issue, please include the issue identifier (e.g., w3cMediaType-1) in the subject line of your email. This will also help us track issues.
• Please do not send broad requests for review of documents. Instead, the TAG is much more likely to consider specific issues than general requests. The TAG is very interested when two groups disagree about an architectural principle.
• Rather than cross-post a message to several groups including the TAG, please just give the TAG a heads-up with the relevant pointers to the discussion forum where a topic is being discussed (e.g., another Working Group's mailing list archive).
• Include a proposal in your email. A rule of thumb from Dan Connolly: "If a thread goes back and forth three times without anybody suggesting textual changes to the document, something's wrong." (see Dan Connolly's message).