System Event Communications

The Systems Team manages systems and services that are accessed by a wide domain of correspondents, collaborators, colleagues, and other communicants. These systems and services are dispersed over a global network of servers, at hosts in France, Japan, and the United States.

The W3C Systems Team uses the following methods for ensuring communication to the appropriate audiences as system events occur:

• For planned and emergent events that effect the global Public audience at large, the Systems Team updates the W3C System Status page, and sends a notice to the Member mailing list system-noticesdw3.org, to apprise users of the impact and scope of the specific event.
• For planned events, advance notice is given detailing the expected duration of the outage and a note on effected services.
• For emergent issues, the Systems Team ensures a team member actively provides updates concerning the issue as information becomes available.
• Upon resolution, the W3C System Status page gets cleared, and the former note is placed in the W3C System Status Archive page, with e-mail to system-notices, as needed.
• For events that effect the narrower audiences of Member and Team users, the systeam only sends a notice to the system-notices and/or the w3t lists, to apprise users of the impact, scope, and resolution of system events.
• For events that have long term impact, the Systems Team will make a best effort to update and apprise the necessary audiences using the above methods, supplementing posted information with updates, as significant changes occur.

NB: This protocol addresses the communication of system events only, and not exigencies that may arise with ancillary concurrent events, e.g., deadline expiry, event registration info, comment submission, etc. Such exigencies should be carefully coordinated among all relevant parties, before communication is made with any effected users.