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.

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

• For planned, emergent, or ongoing events that effect the global Public audience at large, the Systems Team updates the W3C Systems Status page 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 Systems Status page gets updated.
• 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.
• For events that impact narrower or internal audiences the Systeam only sends notices directly to the concerned users (e.g. by emailing w3t@w3.org for issues that only impact the Team).

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.