Re: Moving forward? (issue tracking, spec review, shaping email discussions)

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Are we still supposed not to discuss issues on this list? I hear 
> conflicting opinions about this. Also, what exactly is the plan in 
> moving forward? Are the chairs working on this? Someone else?

One idea for a plan is to start review with the parsing/tree
construction stuff. I'd encourage messages of the form

   I have an issue with what section XYZ says about the attached
   test/example document, which is typical of [some use case...].

Bonus points for

   I suggest the following spec text instead ...

And then the editor(s) would respond, on a best effort basis.
Various scenarios might follow:

   1. the editor says "yup; good idea; I pasted that in, with a
     few tweaks. See version 1.232" and the thread ends there,
     with apparent consensus

   2. the editor says "no, because that would be inconsistent
     with section ABC, especially if you consider this
     example/test ..." and the commentor says "ah; yes; never mind"

   3. discussion goes on for a while, but eventually resolves a la 1 or 2

   4. the editor doesn't respond to the comment in a few days to a week.
      Nobody bothers to follow up. Life goes on.

   5. The editor says "hmm... that's tricky; I'm not in a position
      to swap it in just now; somebody please add
      it to the issues list we we don't forget."

   6. the editor doesn't respond to the comment. An advocate (perhaps
      the commentor, perhaps somebody else) adds the issue to the
      issue tracking system to make sure we get to it eventually.

After we do that for a week or two, we move on to another section.
The idea would be to go over the whole spec, a chunk at a time,
not necessarily fixing all the problems with it, but getting most
of the WG familiar with most of it, and getting the bulk of the
outstanding issues in the issue tracking system.

The chairs are working on this, rather slowly.

Some say the parsing/tree construction stuff requires too much
study before a typical WG member can comment on it intelligently,
and that we should start with something more approachable.
There's also an argument for starting at the beginning, since
that's what we're asking readers to do.
A few of these options are listed
at the bottom of http://esw.w3.org/topic/HtmlTaskBrainstorm ;
I welcome advise.

I'm the source of conflicting opinions about whether discussion
is in order; on 9 May, I closed
email discussion.
http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/46423D1F.5060500@w3.org;list=public-html

On 25 May, I encouraged the editor(s) to discuss "Unscoped <style> found 
outside the <head> "
http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/1180140332.19898.86.camel@pav.dm93.org;list=public-html

In between, in my message of 14 May,
http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/4648D6C7.3020701@w3.org;list=public-html
I reported on efforts to set up issue tracking and such, and asked
for volunteers for the "issue tracking, summarization, and clustering"
task. Ah... it seems we have a few more now...

#  issue tracking, summarization, and clustering

    1. Dan Connolly
    2. Chasen Le Hara
    3. Debi Orton
    4. David Dailey
    5. David McClure
    6. James Graham
    7. Ian Hickson
    8. Roman Kitainik
    9. Benjamin Hedrington
   10. Karl Dubost
   11. Jens Meiert
   12. Shawn Medero

Some "need a bit of hand-holding"; it's not clear that there's anybody
that Chris W. I can just delegate to a la "take it away and get back
to us when you get stuck". And I haven't managed to do the relevant
training in the last couple weeks.

Oddly, there's little overlap between that list and the people
who did some work on 
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueTrackerRequirements , including
setting up a bugzilla product.

I'm inclined to have a teleconference next Thursday, 7 June,
to get synchronized a bit better. Or maybe just IRC office hours.
I particularly want to talk about getting a test suite started.

Anybody who is interested in a bit of a leadership role in
managing issues and shaping email discussion, please let me
and Chris W. know (preferably via the tasks survey...
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/tasks83/ use
"orientation: documenting group norms, helping people learn them"
task for shaping email discussions.)

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Tuesday, 29 May 2007 20:39:13 UTC