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Results of Questionnaire Survey of W3C Community and Business Groups
The results of this questionnaire are available to anybody. In addition, answers are sent to the following email address: public-council@w3.org
This questionnaire was open from 2012-08-01 to 2012-09-30.
45 answers have been received.
Jump to results for question:
- Overall Experience
- Work Flow
- Discovery
- Group Type Comparison
- Decision-making
- Ensuring Progress
- Transition to Working Group
- Process, Patent and Copyright Policy, Contribution Agreements
- Overall User Interface
- User Accounts
- Joining a Group
- Creating a Group
- Group Operations
- Suggestion Box
- Testimonial
1. Overall Experience
Please rate your overall experience according to the following aspects:
Summary
| Choice | All responders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | No opinion | |
| Your overall experience with Community Groups and Business Groups. | 4 | 8 | 11 | 13 | 6 | 3 |
| Have you found the Community Groups and Business Groups documentation adequate (FAQ, policy summaries, etc.)? | 1 | 6 | 12 | 16 | 3 | 7 |
Averages:
| Choices | All responders: |
|---|---|
| Value | |
| Your overall experience with Community Groups and Business Groups. | 3.21 |
| Have you found the Community Groups and Business Groups documentation adequate (FAQ, policy summaries, etc.)? | 3.37 |
Details
| Responder | Your overall experience with Community Groups and Business Groups. | Have you found the Community Groups and Business Groups documentation adequate (FAQ, policy summaries, etc.)? | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | 3 | 2 | |
| Roger Cutler | 3 | 2 | I've found the documentation to be a bit sketchy, sometimes not correct, and somewhat difficult to find things. I am not experienced as a Chair and I had a tough time getting into the role. Also -- some of the documentation has not been accessible by a person who is not a member of the W3C. On the other hand, W3C staff has responded wonderfully to my somewhat doofus problems, and in particular their upgrade of the Trackbot function has been very helpful. I cannot give the "overall experience" higher than a 3 because the group has been kind of marginal in its effectiveness so far. That, however, is OUR fault, not yours. |
| Mike Amundsen | 3 | 3 | |
| Arthur Keen | 3 | 2 | |
| Torsten Straßer | 4 | 4 | |
| Tobie Langel | 4 | 4 | |
| Robert Sanderson | 5 | 3 | Sometimes difficult to find information regarding policies, such as not having trackers on specification pages. |
| Chaals Nevile | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Olivier Thereaux | 3 | No opinion | My experience with CG and BGs has been mixed. Some groups have been running like WGs, with an experienced chair and a strong focus, and have been fantastic to be part of. Others seem to convene, not know what to do, and die a slow death. I don't think it is a problem with documentation - the documentation is mostly OK. More of a problem of interaction design and flow, IMHO. |
| Melvin Carvalho | 5 | 5 | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | 5 | 3 | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | 5 | 4 | |
| Karl Dubost | 3 | 4 | |
| Renato Iannella | 5 | 4 | |
| Sreejumon Purayil | 1 | 3 | |
| Yaso Córdova | 4 | 2 | |
| Kai Hendry | 2 | 2 | I'm not convinced these periphery groups are a good idea. It does give some folks a forum, but there are plenty of alternatives on the Web. |
| Lucinda Lewis | 2 | 1 | As a business person, I was often challenged by the technical nature of the group. My reasons for joining the group were to help develop strategic solutions for problems facing my industry and it was frequently difficult for me to translate the technical solutions being discussed into practical business applications. |
| Oystein Haaland | 3 | 4 | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | 3 | 4 | |
| Colin Snover | 1 | No opinion | |
| Milan Young | 1 | No opinion | CGs provide a perceived endorsement from the W3C for unmoderated discussions and specifications. While I understand that there may be some use cases for lightweight discussion forums, I do not believe the material resulting from such forums should be accessible to those outside the group. |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | 4 | 4 | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | 4 | 3 | It’s ok, but the interface is partly really confusing. The most annoying thing is the limit on username length, which forces me to use a completely different username from anywhere also and hence also leads to log in problems sometimes when I forget how exactly I spelled it. |
| Veronica Cisneros | No opinion | No opinion | I have not interacting much with groups. I was expecting to receive notification of any activity, but I have not received any emails alerting me of new documents or new comments or anything |
| Dave Pawson | 4 | 4 | It seemed to need 'pipe cleaning', but cooperative staff made that easy. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | 3 | 4 | |
| Christophe Gueret | 4 | 4 | |
| Ana Amelio | 4 | 4 | |
| Lars Gunther | 4 | 3 | |
| Peter Rushforth | 4 | 3 | |
| Markus Lanthaler | 4 | 4 | |
| Adrian Roselli | 4 | 3 | |
| Deborah Dahl | 2 | 5 | |
| Annette Greiner | 3 | 4 | |
| Maurice Cherry | 3 | 3 | |
| Arthur Barstow | No opinion | No opinion | Overall, I think the CG experiment has been very successful and I support it continuing (it is certainly way mo' bett'a than the so-called "Incubator Groups"). As an Advisory Committee rep, we had to create some new internal policies regarding participation. This required a bit more ramp up overhead than I expected. However, we are now over that hurdle and I think the benefits are clear. I am a member of six CGs. Some of them are doing nothing and should be closed; others are making some progress. Given a CG may have an extremely narrow scope or an almost unbounded scope, I think this diversity regarding activity and progress is to be expected. Here are some potential areas for CG improvement: 1. Clear Purpose and Scope - although it's good that CGs have the flexibility to determine their own scope, work mode, etc., the diversity can make difficult for an "outsider" to determine what exactly a CG is doing. As such, I think it would be helpful is there was at least some "normalization of CG home pages. In general, it sees like every CG home page should include a clear (as possible) statement about its scope (and if the scope changes, the statement updated accordingly). The scope should include: why the group was created; the intended audience/participants; enumerate the groups doing related work (e.g. other CGs, other WGs, other SSOs, etc.); etc. More specifically, when a CG home page is created, it should use a template that includes placeholders for the above information as well as the following: a. Participants' Expectations - every CG should document the roles and expectations of the group's "leaders" (e.g. Chair(s), document Editors, etc.) as well as the participation expectations for CG participants. b. Work Mode - every CG should document the group's "work mode". For example, the group is mail list only, the group will have f2f meetings, the group will have IRC meetings, etc. c. Decision Making - every CG should document how the group makes decision; what if any role does consensus play d. Milestones, Schedule & Plans - every CG should document what it expects to "deliver" and when e. Are We Done Yet? Requirement - every CG should document its life expectancy plan. Leaving a CG open when it is no longer active is a bit remiss and the CG's "leader(s)" (or the CG's creators if no leaders emerge) should close the CG when it is done or no longer active. (IOW, the group's leader(s) should periodically run the "if this CG closes, will anyone notice?" test.) 2. There should be mail list to discuss topics that cross CGs e.g. how do other CGs do X; what are other CGs doing to track issues, how can we have a voice conference, etc. (If such a list already exists, please let me know its name.) 3. Create a list for CG announcements. In particular I want to know when a CG publishes a document/specification. Re the questions about infrastructure, for CGs I think it's good enough "as is". If some additional work is needed, I would rather see W3C staff resources spent on advancing the OpenWebPlatform and let CGs figure how to take care of their infra needs. I haven't participated in any BGs so I have no comments about them. |
| Frode Kileng | 2 | 2 | |
| Markus Leutwyler | 4 | 4 | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | 2 | 4 | |
| Teotonio Simoes | 2 | 3 | Good idea. But... as the ebook group concern I was expecting participation of more people engaged in the ebook revolution process. |
| Wai Seto | 5 | 5 | |
| Jason Grigsby | 2 | 3 | The community groups infrastructure is an odd mix. There are multiple mailing lists, but when we started, no one used the mailing list. There is a blog, but you don’t get notifications when someone adds a comment to the blog. Sometimes I would have to log in via http basic auth. Other times everything worked with cookies. Basically, it seems like a bunch of tools that a very loosely coupled which makes the experience difficult. |
| James Barnett | 1 | 3 | Community Groups should be abolished as soon as possible. Their existence (and total lack of due process) undermines the whole purpose of a standards organization. I can't think of a better way for the W3C to go out of business than to promote CGs to the detriment of real Working Groups. |
| Rob Marchand | 2 | No opinion | In our particular experience with Speech+HTML, it seems that there is no goal to offer the output as a submission to a regular working group. This is disappointing. We believe that the CG process should more clearly define the transition of deliverables to WG status, and that planning for this transition should be part of the requirements for CG chartering. |
2. Work Flow
Questions 4 through 9 focus on work flow.
Details
| Responder |
|---|
| Florent Georges |
| Roger Cutler |
| Mike Amundsen |
| Arthur Keen |
| Torsten Straßer |
| Tobie Langel |
| Robert Sanderson |
| Chaals Nevile |
| Olivier Thereaux |
| Melvin Carvalho |
| Dominik Tomaszuk |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI |
| Karl Dubost |
| Renato Iannella |
| Sreejumon Purayil |
| Yaso Córdova |
| Kai Hendry |
| Lucinda Lewis |
| Oystein Haaland |
| Paolo Ciccarese |
| Colin Snover |
| Milan Young |
| Silvia Pfeiffer |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt |
| Veronica Cisneros |
| Dave Pawson |
| Emmanuel Desmontils |
| Christophe Gueret |
| Ana Amelio |
| Lars Gunther |
| Peter Rushforth |
| Markus Lanthaler |
| Adrian Roselli |
| Deborah Dahl |
| Annette Greiner |
| Maurice Cherry |
| Arthur Barstow |
| Frode Kileng |
| Markus Leutwyler |
| Vidhya Gholkar |
| Teotonio Simoes |
| Wai Seto |
| Jason Grigsby |
| James Barnett |
| Rob Marchand |
3. Discovery
Did you find it easy to discover groups of interest to you?
Summary
| Choice | All responders |
|---|---|
| Results | |
| yes | 35 |
| no | 8 |
(2 responses didn't contain an answer to this question)
Details
| Responder | Discovery | If not, why? (or any other comments) |
|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | no | |
| Roger Cutler | yes | It has been easy because W3C staff and experienced W3C members have been personally helpful. I have not been very successful and "discovery" without human assistance. As always, however, the W3C family has been very helpful and kind. |
| Mike Amundsen | no | not clear where to look or how to filter. would be nice if i could enter tags indicating interest and get suggestions on which groups to join. would be nice if i could "follow" or "monitor" a group w/o joining to see if it is interesting. |
| Arthur Keen | yes | |
| Torsten Straßer | yes | |
| Tobie Langel | no | |
| Robert Sanderson | yes | But will need further services as the list continues to grow. |
| Chaals Nevile | ||
| Olivier Thereaux | yes | Yes, but… I find it easy because I subscribe to a list giving me a heads-up whenever a new group is created. If I had to navigate the existing list of arcanely titled groups in search of something interesting, I would probably struggle. That's not going to get any better as time passes and groups pile up. |
| Melvin Carvalho | yes | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | yes | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | yes | |
| Karl Dubost | no | Once a community group is proposed, there should be a kind of blog post where it is explained why the group is proposed, what are the initial plans etc. Once the group has been created there should be a kind of mandatory first blog post, wiki page restating the purpose of the group. Categorization might also help to find the group among the 100+ ones. Free tagging? |
| Renato Iannella | yes | |
| Sreejumon Purayil | yes | |
| Yaso Córdova | yes | |
| Kai Hendry | no | Well, I heard about for example the Web signage business group from a tweet. Wouldn't have known otherwise. |
| Lucinda Lewis | yes | |
| Oystein Haaland | yes | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | yes | |
| Colin Snover | no | Never tried to find groups. |
| Milan Young | yes | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | no | I don't really know actually - whenever I was searching for interesting ones, I might have found them. But I am not sure I noticed them all. Might be worth having a subscription to a list that announces new groups. |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | yes | There aren’t that many, so it’s not that hard. But the interface for doing it is a simple alphabetically sorted list, which makes not a lot of sense. Rather it should probably sort by popularity or participants, or prioritize by other groups which people of the community groups I am already in are also in. |
| Veronica Cisneros | yes | |
| Dave Pawson | yes | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | yes | |
| Christophe Gueret | yes | |
| Ana Amelio | yes | |
| Lars Gunther | yes | |
| Peter Rushforth | yes | |
| Markus Lanthaler | yes | |
| Adrian Roselli | yes | |
| Deborah Dahl | yes | |
| Annette Greiner | yes | |
| Maurice Cherry | yes | |
| Arthur Barstow | ||
| Frode Kileng | yes | |
| Markus Leutwyler | yes | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | yes | |
| Teotonio Simoes | yes | |
| Wai Seto | yes | |
| Jason Grigsby | no | This is a tough one because I’ve never tried to look for other groups. I decided to go with no because of the fact that when I’m in the RiCG or CoreMob, I don’t have much sense of things going on in other groups. I’ve found out about groups because of Twitter, not because of any facilities provided by the site. |
| James Barnett | yes | |
| Rob Marchand | yes |
4. Group Type Comparison
If you have experience in both Working Group and Community or Business Group, what advantages do you see for Working Groups? for Community or Business Groups?
Details
| Responder | Comments |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | WGs have more support (both from within W3C and from the wild wild world). CGs have a more dedicated platform, so it is easier to make quicker decisions and administration tasks. |
| Roger Cutler | WG - More W3C involvement is very useful, stricter process focuses effort BG - Availability to non-members is KEY, looser process allows more flexibility |
| Mike Amundsen | |
| Arthur Keen | |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | Lighter process in CGs. |
| Robert Sanderson | - |
| Chaals Nevile | |
| Olivier Thereaux | Some of the CG/BG tools for coordination and web presence are great, and they would benefit a few WGs too. WGs still massively more effective on average, largely thanks to the work of W3C staff coordinating, nudging and advising chairs and groups on how to get things done. Surprisingly, I haven't found my BG to benefit a lot from staff involvement - possibly because the BG does not yet have a clear mandate, so the staff can't help as much as they would in a WG with a clear charter. Oh yes, charters are also what make WGs better - they do set a scope, and milestones too. The latter are seldom reached in time, of course, but they give groups something to strive for. |
| Melvin Carvalho | CG seems more open to participation |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | Community Group is a great opportunity to transform to the Working Group. |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | Working Groups are more focused and can go forward more firmly Community Groups can go fast or slow depending on the momentum I have no experience with Business Groups |
| Karl Dubost | For communities the possibility to aggregate around a topic and work together. What is not clear is how this helps people to start working on things. Basically the impression is that if you know how w3c operates already it is a lot easier, but if not you might have pain. Suggestion: Testing with a few users who are completely agnostic to W3C site and/or participation. And identify the type of questions that arises |
| Renato Iannella | WGs have a more rigorous deliverable schedule and w3c member-level requirements. CGs can work on community-level requirements and timelines. |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | Community Groups can put more people toguether. |
| Kai Hendry | Getting to meet influential people, especially from foreign countries. Sharing experience in pushing open Web based technologies ... |
| Lucinda Lewis | |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | I like the flexibility of the Community Groups. It would be ideal if what comes out from the Community Groups could be used as starting point for a Working Group or at least an Incubator. Not sure if the latter will still make sense though. |
| Colin Snover | |
| Milan Young | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | |
| Veronica Cisneros | I do not know what the differences are ( I imagine you refer to these three categories within the W3C website) |
| Dave Pawson | More formal structure and expectations, hence easier to fit with the group. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | Discussion on new approaches. |
| Christophe Gueret | I don't really see the difference. I opened a community group (DLD) because that was the less constraining of the two but it seems to me that at the end you get the same thing. I suggest merging the two types of groups into one. |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | WG:s tend to be more formal, and indeed should be. Other groups are very varied and their worth will be proven over time. |
| Peter Rushforth | |
| Markus Lanthaler | Well, Working Groups can produce official standards but CGs can not. The disadvantage of WGs is that one usually has to be an employee of a company with W3C membership. |
| Adrian Roselli | Community groups seem to allow interaction on the site as well as on a mailing list. I do not think discussions on the site are as effective (personal preference) and that has thrown me. Seeing some declaration from the group up-front about where discussion will happen, along with reminders from group chairs, might increase participation (if only by reducing confusion). |
| Deborah Dahl | |
| Annette Greiner | |
| Maurice Cherry | |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | Yes experience with both. (e.g. WebRTC, DAP CG: Core mob) Working groups are the natural arm of a SDO they deliver specifications. What we see implied or explicit in these groups is that what matters is whether a browser vendors support something or not. This is the playground of these vendors. Irrespective of whether a charter exists or not at least in the case of the Core Mob CG, the purpose the group is far more murky. If one wants to change a spec the best place to go is a WG. However, it is not unreasobale to say that the CG could be a good place to do the ground work to improve or produce new technical specifications. But frankly the linkage between the Core Mob CG and the WG is tenuous. |
| Teotonio Simoes | I think that a WG with a well defined aim has a better change to succeed. As a matter of fact, a proposal for the Digital Publication Group such as an specification as result will be nice. I was/am aiming for a W3 Digital Open eBook Spec - one file/one book - metadata spec pattern for libraries and bookshops use - an integration language (such as SMIL for multimedia) for resources other than text into an ebook. Well... that was not the question.. Quoting: "will be to determine if W3C should invest more heavily in digital publication" - the existence of such a group gives the answer: yes. But next steps, please. |
| Wai Seto | The major differences that I can see are IPR policy between WG and C/BG. It seems that C/BG has less restrictions to start the discussions. That is a positive thing I believe. |
| Jason Grigsby | |
| James Barnett | Community Groups undermine the entire foundation of the standards process (which is acountabilty ,consensus, and rigorous process. I see no advantage to them whatsoever. |
| Rob Marchand | Although CGs can and do support rapid advancement, it seems that the current process needs some adjustment to ensure that there is a goal of working towards standards track, and that the group is in fact representing the contributions of all participants in the CG (based on our experience with Speech+HTML). |
5. Decision-making
How is your Community or Business Group organized to make decisions? Have you reached decisions on challenging problems? We'd love to hear your successes or obstacles you've faced.
Details
| Responder | Comments |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | It is based on consensus (possible as there is not a lot of people, and the work has been cut down into smaller pieces). |
| Roger Cutler | Too early to have any big decisions, but we seem to be successfully focusing our scope onto a particular use case. Process is modeled after W3C norms and tradition as much as possible. That is, reach for consensus. So far no huge controversies, but we may have one coming up re relevance of an ISO standard and activity in another organization and how involved we should be with that activity. We shall see how this plays out, but hopefully it will be done with civility and reasonable consensus. |
| Mike Amundsen | just got into this and decision-making is still loose. would be nice if we had some clear guidelines (not rules, just guidelines) that we could adopt, modify, etc. |
| Arthur Keen | |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | Described in the charter: http://www.w3.org/community/coremob/charter/ Worked well so far (especially since we have a great chair). |
| Robert Sanderson | Currently benevolent dictatorship of the chairs. |
| Chaals Nevile | |
| Olivier Thereaux | Hasn't happened a lot in my groups. The poll tool was useful in a few cases, though. |
| Melvin Carvalho | It's kind of self organizing, it's great! |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | I think that FG and BG should have similar mechanisms of challenge problems and make decisions to WG. |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | No important decisions made so far |
| Karl Dubost | N/A |
| Renato Iannella | The group members decide, and then vote on the final specs |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | The acceptance process is too much protracted. It descouraged people to get involved. |
| Kai Hendry | |
| Lucinda Lewis | I have a business publishing project that could be coded in html5 using the ODRL terms discussed by my group. This would be a good test case for the framework developed. However, I have real doubts about my ability to find someone to execute upon the decisions made within my business group. How would you suggest I proceed? |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | Together with the other co-chair of the Open Annotation Community Group we try to discuss issues in between us and with the larger group as much as possible. Normally we have few private discussions just to make sure to be organized in the groups discussions. The group discussions are happening both by email/conference and are often based on the previous email and the content of the Wiki |
| Colin Snover | |
| Milan Young | The lack of structure around decision making is the downfall of a CG. Allowing charters to give complete authority to the chair is a recipe for a dictatorship. There must be some irrevocable requirement for seeking consensus. |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | Discussions on mailing list have been successful. The editor of our CG has not been as cooperative in including all the results into the main document. We are still working that out. |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | We use a mailing list – a Google Group outside of W3C though. It’s easier to sign up for that and it has a way better web interface to enable more people to participate. |
| Veronica Cisneros | I have not heard from any of the member of the groups I joined |
| Dave Pawson | No. The chair(s) are final arbiters, having access to output. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | no |
| Christophe Gueret | We just started and will have the first F2F meeting in two weeks. |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | |
| Peter Rushforth | Consensus seems to be the way that decisions are made; the evaluation of consensus is informal, and is based on who speaks up. I have no problem with that. Is there some recommended way/tool that the w3c encourages decision making? |
| Markus Lanthaler | Yes, often it wasn't easy but we were able to find consensus on all issues. |
| Adrian Roselli | For one working group, a draft specification has come out of it. For two others there has seemingly been little to no activity. For a third, there is good activity on the mailing list. |
| Deborah Dahl | In the group I was in, the Chair, spec Editor and 1/3 of the group's members were from one company. Decision-making all leaned in the direction of that company and was very unbalanced. The process of assigning a Chair to the CG where the first person who's interested in being the Chair can shut everyone out did not work well in this group because we had other people interested in being co-Chairs who couldn't do that. Maybe the first 2 or 3 people who want to chair could volunteer and there should be no more than one co-Chair per company. |
| Annette Greiner | Right now, it's feeling a little difficult to get the rest of the group participating. We have had very little discussion online thus far, and only one telecon meeting that was poorly attended. |
| Maurice Cherry | I don't really know -- I just get a ton of emails. |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | simple voting. No major controversies. |
| Teotonio Simoes | I didn't participate, really. I just looked around, expecting for any initial report |
| Wai Seto | F2F meetings or conference calls -> CoreMob Email -> WebEdu |
| Jason Grigsby | It really wasn’t clear to us what we were supposed to be doing. And because the work we were doing on images required browser vendor feedback, it felt like a lot of work we were doing was pointless. |
| James Barnett | The Community Group I have been involved in has engaged in blatant abuse consensus-based decision making. A single company founded the group, appointed the chairman and the editors, and has since made it clear that consensus is whatever they agree with. Such blatant abuse could never take place in a true Working Group. When we (several companies) asked for a co-chair to be appointed, we were told that "There wasn't any consensus" for that move - i.e. that the company that controlled the group didn't agree to share the power. |
| Rob Marchand | The Speech+HTML CG has not driven towards consensus decisions, but rather has been dominated by one of the main participants. |
6. Ensuring Progress
Are you satisfied with how the Community or Business Group makes progress? What would enable you to make better progress?
Details
| Responder | Comments |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | This is quite slow. Probably an edition tool for specs would be nice (we have several editors for several specs at EXPath and I spend quite some time explaining how to do it). That would for instance allow automatic diff specs. It would be nice to have an issue tracking system (a bit more appealing than Bugzilla, btw). |
| Roger Cutler | Modestly satisfied with modest progress. Limiting factors are the limited time and effort the participants are willing/able to put into the job and -- big factor -- lack of participation from key industry segments. That is, we have no representation from the tech services sector, which is really important in our industry. Again, our fault not yours. |
| Mike Amundsen | not making much progress right now. but it's early. |
| Arthur Keen | |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | Yes. |
| Robert Sanderson | Yes. Conference call facilities would be useful, but seems outside of the W3C's scope. |
| Chaals Nevile | This depends on the group, and naturally especially the chairs. Chair training is like ponies - we all want more... but... |
| Olivier Thereaux | |
| Melvin Carvalho | Maybe some semantic web technology in the platform. Or a WebID login. |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | Regular meeting |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | I think that everyone is trying this new tool and will come up with more idea soon. |
| Karl Dubost | Most of the groups I have been in… are sleeping. I'm not putting the blame on anyone or any structure. People have a life, and there is enough will or need, things make progress. It's normal. As for ensuring progress, the chair is kind of key. Not the most knowledgeable person but the most community focused person in the group with time in his/her hands. Rare bird. |
| Renato Iannella | Each CG seems to be responsible for their own progress (which is one of the advantages of the CG program) |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | |
| Kai Hendry | More participation perhaps. Better drivers. |
| Lucinda Lewis | See Above Real world applications can only improve the business group progress. |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | I am satisfied with the direction of our group. I belong to another group as well but I don't see much progress there. I wonder if all groups are active. Probably recommending an heavy use of mailing list and wiki would be a good idea. |
| Colin Snover | Community Groups stall out almost immediately because of the horribly cumbersome process for registering, joining, and posting messages to the mailing list. |
| Milan Young | The progress of the CG I was involved in is a case of one step forward and two steps backwards. If it were in my power I would reset the state of the groups work back to the beginning. |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | Progress has been slow, but probably adequate. |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | Yes, but if the mailing list interface would be better and we could use that as well then that would help a lot to move to more open technology. |
| Veronica Cisneros | No, there is not activity and no discussion in the groups I joined |
| Dave Pawson | Not really. No goals set, no timescales, hence no urgency. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | Yes |
| Christophe Gueret | So far it's good enough for us |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | Participants, including myself, are a bit slow. We also need a designer urgently, in order to show our results in a way that is appealing. |
| Peter Rushforth | Yes. |
| Markus Lanthaler | I'm satisfied even though it often takes longer than expected. |
| Adrian Roselli | This is less a function of the group and more about its chair. There should be clear output objectives and a scope. From there it's a matter of a chair to make sure discussion stays in scope and moves toward the objective, other he/she should redirect it. |
| Deborah Dahl | |
| Annette Greiner | It would help me as the chair to have a better understanding of how to engage the rest of the group. I realize that it was a conscious choice to make the process very flexible, but this leaves me wondering how to invent a process. |
| Maurice Cherry | Unsure. |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | Not really. Progress needs to be judged against some criteria or metric. The core issue with this group is that it is unclear who the audience is. |
| Teotonio Simoes | No progress, at all |
| Wai Seto | It seems different groups have different expectations and objectives. Some have better define targets and some are not. In general, I think it is okay. May be some kind of progress reviews with the C/BG with the members will help. |
| Jason Grigsby | A bit, but again, we were creating things in a vacuum without any sense of what we might need to do to shepherd our needs through the standards process. |
| James Barnett | We would make better progress towards true consensus-based standards if community groups were abolished. |
| Rob Marchand | We believe that if a CG wishes to publish their output, they should be allowed to do so only as the input to a full Working Group. |
7. Transition to Working Group
Do you expect to advance Community or Business Group deliverables to a W3C Working Group? Please use the comment field for any information about the transition (time frame, perceived obstacles or challenges).
Summary
| Choice | All responders |
|---|---|
| Results | |
| Yes | 16 |
| No | 8 |
| In discussion but not decided | 9 |
| No idea | 11 |
(1 response didn't contain an answer to this question)
Details
| Responder | Transition to Working Group | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | No | By nature, this is more both an incubator for new ideas for XSLT and XQuery WGs, and a place to define extensions that are beyond the scope of those WGs. |
| Roger Cutler | No | We expect to advance deliverables to suitable industry standards groups for further development and support. Details of how this handoff will work are as yet a bit murky, but there seems to be a consensus that this is more or less how it should work. |
| Mike Amundsen | In discussion but not decided | |
| Arthur Keen | No | |
| Torsten Straßer | In discussion but not decided | |
| Tobie Langel | In discussion but not decided | |
| Robert Sanderson | Yes | |
| Chaals Nevile | Yes | I pushed the signage CG to look at this idea. For them, a new version of SMIL that basically brings it into line with the rest of the Web (use JS, maybe some more features but not necessarily) seems important. But first the group needs to be reconstituted, and before that the BG needs to do the work... |
| Olivier Thereaux | No idea | |
| Melvin Carvalho | No idea | The RWW is working on many standards track specs as well as experimental. I'm sure specs will be elevated as necessary. |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | Yes | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | Yes | This is certainly one of the goal |
| Karl Dubost | No idea | As it depends of the group context. |
| Renato Iannella | In discussion but not decided | We believe it would be useful for the web to have a policy language. But this has always been a contentious issue in the past. |
| Sreejumon Purayil | No | |
| Yaso Córdova | In discussion but not decided | |
| Kai Hendry | No idea | |
| Lucinda Lewis | No idea | |
| Oystein Haaland | In discussion but not decided | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | Yes | |
| Colin Snover | No | |
| Milan Young | Yes | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | In discussion but not decided | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | In discussion but not decided | We don’t know yet. First we have to stabilize the remoteStorage standard we work on. |
| Veronica Cisneros | No idea | |
| Dave Pawson | No idea | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | Yes | |
| Christophe Gueret | Yes | We will most likely work without fixed time frame and push some deliverables to public review as we found them ready for publication. |
| Ana Amelio | No idea | |
| Lars Gunther | No | |
| Peter Rushforth | In discussion but not decided | It will take leadership and work to get to that point, but yes, I would hope we can get a WG eventually for a practical reformulation of XML hypermedia. IMHO, XML on the web has got one hand tied behind its back because of the XLink legacy, which is too complicated by half to be useful. That said, what constitutes 'simple' is open to debate. That, and maybe XML on the web is no longer a goal of XML. But for those of us still willing to work with XML on the web, that would be a disappointment. |
| Markus Lanthaler | Yes | We did it already :-) |
| Adrian Roselli | Yes | I say this because it has happened with the Responsive Images community group. |
| Deborah Dahl | Yes | |
| Annette Greiner | Yes | We are agreed that we want to develop a standard, but we have no particular time frame for doing that yet. |
| Maurice Cherry | No idea | |
| Arthur Barstow | ||
| Frode Kileng | No idea | |
| Markus Leutwyler | No idea | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | Yes | Not clear. |
| Teotonio Simoes | Yes | A w3 Digital Publishing Specification (W3 Digital Publishing *Open* Spec) will be REALLY useful. I'm concerned about the future (as Michael Hart and others at Gutenberg were) of books, when I see more and more ebooks locked (DRM but also - and mainly - ebooks as applications). Remembering w3 initial proposal: keep the web open and non proprietary. Still remains? |
| Wai Seto | Yes | It would be good to have well defined "deliverables" for the WGs. |
| Jason Grigsby | Yes | The adaptive images spec is at the W3C. |
| James Barnett | No | A single company founded the community group, named the chairman and the editors, and made it clear that 'consensus' was whatever they wanted. They have since stated that they will not join a Working Group and intended to continue all work in the community group. This is a blatant abuse of standards process, and it is clear that they intend to publish their private corporate API as a "W3C document". The rest of the world doesn't understand the different between a CG note and a true standards-track document, and thus the value of the W3C imprimatur will be cheapened. |
| Rob Marchand | No | Our participation in Speech+HTML has had the goal of doing this, but present chair/editors seem to have no intention of doing so. |
8. Process, Patent and Copyright Policy, Contribution Agreements
Do you have any suggestions for changes to the Community Groups and Business Groups process, Contributor Agreement, or Final Specification Agreement that would facilitate participation?
Details
| Responder | Process, Patent and Copyright Policy, Contribution Agreements |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | |
| Roger Cutler | No. |
| Mike Amundsen | |
| Arthur Keen | No |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | No. |
| Robert Sanderson | |
| Chaals Nevile | Given that there is no clear idea of when you get to a final spec, and it is too easy to game the process until then, situations like whatwgcg are pretty scary in principle. But I am not sure how that could be improved... |
| Olivier Thereaux | |
| Melvin Carvalho | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | I do not have access to Contributor Agreement, or Final Specification Agreement. I reported that but still not working. |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | No suggestions |
| Karl Dubost | nope. |
| Renato Iannella | all ok |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | The "get in" process for community group is very time consuming with all of those confirmations. It must be as fast as an email group! |
| Kai Hendry | Make it simpler |
| Lucinda Lewis | see above |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | No. |
| Colin Snover | |
| Milan Young | See above |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | Not really, because especially the agreements are really long and painful to read. That’s basically also why we started »Terms of Service; Didn’t Read«: http://tos-dr.info – it would be cool if you could help us to rate your terms. |
| Veronica Cisneros | Perhaps to require that at least one member join as a leader. Then this leader has the responsibility to initiate discussion or prompt others to |
| Dave Pawson | It seems to be working. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | |
| Christophe Gueret | |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | |
| Peter Rushforth | |
| Markus Lanthaler | No |
| Adrian Roselli | A plain-language summary for those of us without legal degrees or spare change to afford someone who has a legal degree. |
| Deborah Dahl | |
| Annette Greiner | |
| Maurice Cherry | |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | |
| Teotonio Simoes | use of other web resources outside of W3 borders, such as twitter or facebook |
| Wai Seto | |
| Jason Grigsby | |
| James Barnett | |
| Rob Marchand | We would like to see a more rigorous path and requirements for the transition from CG to WG. |
9. Overall User Interface
Please rate the usability of the following aspects:
Summary
| Choice | All responders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | No opinion | |
| The home page of your Community or Business Group | 8 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 6 | |
| Other parts of the Community and Business Group Web site. | 5 | 18 | 12 | 1 | 9 | |
Averages:
| Choices | All responders: |
|---|---|
| Value | |
| The home page of your Community or Business Group | 3.13 |
| Other parts of the Community and Business Group Web site. | 3.25 |
Details
| Responder | The home page of your Community or Business Group | Other parts of the Community and Business Group Web site. | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | 3 | 3 | |
| Roger Cutler | 3 | 3 | The Web tools provided on the group site are excellent. We have not, however, really developed the site very effectively. Once again, it's us not you. |
| Mike Amundsen | 3 | 3 | |
| Arthur Keen | 3 | 3 | |
| Torsten Straßer | 4 | 4 | |
| Tobie Langel | 2 | 3 | |
| Robert Sanderson | 4 | 4 | It's okay, but limited by the technologies (vanilla mediawiki, wordpress) |
| Chaals Nevile | No opinion | 3 | There are some things where i am surprised by not finding a link I expected, but I can't remember them right now. I should poke the w3process group a bit so might find out... |
| Olivier Thereaux | 3 | 3 | It's OK. I'm still confused by how the community groups' web space is largely dedicated to the blog, when the groups often communicate mostly via the mailing-list. Would be great to feature list activity on the HP somehow. I'm also giving a 3 for the usability of the list of groups. The live search is nice, but the usability of the accordion effect and the location of the links to the groups' home pages need to be tested with users and fixed. |
| Melvin Carvalho | 4 | 4 | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | 4 | 4 | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | 3 | 3 | |
| Karl Dubost | 2 | 2 | Not pleasant. But this is not very constructive. To be constructive it would require for me to analyze why in depth. Takes time. Sorry. |
| Renato Iannella | 2 | 4 | We need to better control the front page. The centre column should be in our total editorial control, not dominated by the posts. |
| Sreejumon Purayil | 2 | 2 | |
| Yaso Córdova | 2 | 2 | |
| Kai Hendry | 3 | No opinion | |
| Lucinda Lewis | 3 | No opinion | |
| Oystein Haaland | 3 | 3 | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | 3 | 3 | The home page should be more customizable. But we can still work with the current tools. |
| Colin Snover | 2 | No opinion | |
| Milan Young | 4 | 4 | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | 4 | 4 | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | 2 | 2 | It’s a bit overkill. Too much text, navigation elements all over the place, new pages for everything and little inline stuff, not clear what one is able to do. |
| Veronica Cisneros | 3 | No opinion | |
| Dave Pawson | 3 | 3 | Needs reviewing wrt ergonomics? I found it confusing at times, hard to navigate. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | 3 | 4 | |
| Christophe Gueret | 5 | 4 | |
| Ana Amelio | 4 | 4 | |
| Lars Gunther | 3 | 3 | Better visual design is needed! |
| Peter Rushforth | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Markus Lanthaler | 3 | 3 | |
| Adrian Roselli | 3 | 3 | If there is some way for a chair to indicate whether discussion should happen on the site or the mailing list, then I'd like to see them use it. That kind of message right on the home page might help. |
| Deborah Dahl | 5 | 5 | |
| Annette Greiner | 3 | 4 | We have a little info on our home page, enough for getting started, but it would be nice to see more activity there. |
| Maurice Cherry | 3 | 3 | |
| Arthur Barstow | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Frode Kileng | 2 | 2 | |
| Markus Leutwyler | 3 | 3 | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Teotonio Simoes | 3 | 3 | |
| Wai Seto | 5 | 4 | The CG wiki seems very different then the homepage and dashboard. |
| Jason Grigsby | 3 | 3 | |
| James Barnett | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Rob Marchand | No opinion | No opinion |
10. User Accounts
Please rate the usability of any of the following actions you carried out.
Summary
| Choice | All responders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | No opinion | |
| Requesting an account (if you did so just for Community Groups and Business Groups) | 4 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 11 | 13 |
| Updating your affiliation in your account (if you were asked to do so) | 1 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 22 |
Averages:
| Choices | All responders: |
|---|---|
| Value | |
| Requesting an account (if you did so just for Community Groups and Business Groups) | 3.63 |
| Updating your affiliation in your account (if you were asked to do so) | 3.39 |
Details
| Responder | Requesting an account (if you did so just for Community Groups and Business Groups) | Updating your affiliation in your account (if you were asked to do so) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Roger Cutler | 3 | No opinion | I have had significant difficulties because my user account does not have enough privilege to access resources that would be useful or necessary. W3C staff has been very cooperative and helpful in this, and it appears to me that y'all are beginning to get the access control profiles defined more appropriately. That is, things seem to be working better. |
| Mike Amundsen | 4 | 4 | |
| Arthur Keen | 3 | No opinion | |
| Torsten Straßer | 2 | 3 | |
| Tobie Langel | 3 | 2 | |
| Robert Sanderson | 3 | 3 | As it involves people rather than being fully automated, it takes much longer than a simple challenge/response. Expected but the question is about "usability" |
| Chaals Nevile | No opinion | No opinion | Didn't do this (even when I changed - bad chaals). |
| Olivier Thereaux | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Melvin Carvalho | 4 | 4 | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | 5 | 5 | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | 5 | 5 | |
| Karl Dubost | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Renato Iannella | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Sreejumon Purayil | 3 | 3 | |
| Yaso Córdova | 1 | No opinion | |
| Kai Hendry | 1 | 1 | Since my company Webconverger is not paid up and I had an account with W3C from the past, it was very confusing. Still a little confused. |
| Lucinda Lewis | 5 | 5 | |
| Oystein Haaland | 4 | 4 | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Colin Snover | 1 | No opinion | |
| Milan Young | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | 5 | 2 | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | 1 | 2 | This is really painful. Especially the aforementioned low username character limit – this is really not necessary and arbitrarily makes registering harder. |
| Veronica Cisneros | 5 | No opinion | |
| Dave Pawson | 5 | 3 | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | 4 | 2 | |
| Christophe Gueret | 5 | No opinion | |
| Ana Amelio | 5 | 5 | |
| Lars Gunther | 4 | 2 | Some tasks seem redundant when you're on more than 1 group |
| Peter Rushforth | 4 | No opinion | |
| Markus Lanthaler | 3 | 3 | |
| Adrian Roselli | 4 | No opinion | |
| Deborah Dahl | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Annette Greiner | 5 | 3 | Requesting and getting an account was very easy. Dealing with the affiliation info was confusing, in part because it wasn't clear that one needed to sign up as a member if affiliated with a member organization. It was also complicated by changes at my home institution. |
| Maurice Cherry | 5 | 5 | |
| Arthur Barstow | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Frode Kileng | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Markus Leutwyler | 4 | 4 | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Teotonio Simoes | 3 | 3 | |
| Wai Seto | 5 | 5 | |
| Jason Grigsby | 2 | No opinion | |
| James Barnett | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Rob Marchand | No opinion | No opinion |
11. Joining a Group
Please, select the case that applies to you and comment on your experience joining a group (via the click-through form).
Summary
| Choice | All responders |
|---|---|
| Results | |
| I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | 18 |
| I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | 9 |
| I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | 16 |
(2 responses didn't contain an answer to this question)
Details
| Responder | Joining a Group | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Roger Cutler | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | I joined as a member employee but became an unaffiliated (and unemployed) individual after joining. Joining is very easy via the click-through and has not been, to my knowledge, a problem for any of our group members. |
| Mike Amundsen | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Arthur Keen | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Torsten Straßer | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Tobie Langel | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Robert Sanderson | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Chaals Nevile | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | Mostly I joined as the AC rep... But I am in more than one group, so radio buttons are sub-optimal. |
| Olivier Thereaux | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | Being my own AC helps. Some of my colleagues are often surprised that their joining has to be vetted by me, but I'd like to keep it that way. |
| Melvin Carvalho | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Karl Dubost | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Renato Iannella | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Sreejumon Purayil | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Yaso Córdova | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Kai Hendry | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | Not sure if I updated my affiliation to Webconverger correctly. I don't think I can change affiliation IIUC unless Webconverger joins via payment. Not sure what my status is... "a contributor" maybe? |
| Lucinda Lewis | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Oystein Haaland | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Colin Snover | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Milan Young | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | I would have liked to join as an individual, but any joining requires me to use the one registered account. |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Veronica Cisneros | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Dave Pawson | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Christophe Gueret | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Ana Amelio | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Lars Gunther | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Peter Rushforth | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Markus Lanthaler | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Adrian Roselli | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Deborah Dahl | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Annette Greiner | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Maurice Cherry | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | |
| Arthur Barstow | ||
| Frode Kileng | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Markus Leutwyler | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Teotonio Simoes | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | 4th option: as an individual organization: ebooksbrasil.org |
| Wai Seto | I joined as a W3C Member employee, my request was processed by my organization's Advisory Committee Representative | |
| Jason Grigsby | I joined as a non-W3C Member employee, after getting my organization's patent and copyright commitment | |
| James Barnett | I joined as an individual, unaffiliated with any organization | It's much too easy to join a CG without any real IP commitment. (My company is a W3C member, but I didn't need to go through our AC rep to join.) |
| Rob Marchand |
12. Creating a Group
If you created a group, rate the usability of the following aspects:
Summary
| Choice | All responders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | No opinion | |
| Clarity of the process for proposing a group | 1 | 3 | 10 | 7 | 24 | |
| Clarity of the process by which people express support for a group | 2 | 3 | 12 | 4 | 24 | |
Averages:
| Choices | All responders: |
|---|---|
| Value | |
| Clarity of the process for proposing a group | 4.10 |
| Clarity of the process by which people express support for a group | 3.86 |
Details
| Responder | Clarity of the process for proposing a group | Clarity of the process by which people express support for a group | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | 3 | 2 | |
| Roger Cutler | 5 | 4 | |
| Mike Amundsen | 3 | 3 | |
| Arthur Keen | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Torsten Straßer | 4 | 4 | |
| Tobie Langel | 2 | 3 | Wasn't aware of the two step process plus manual approval. |
| Robert Sanderson | 3 | 4 | |
| Chaals Nevile | 5 | 5 | It was pretty straightforward, and took minutes. Which is easy enough. If anything, there should be a bigger push to say hello to other CGs and ask if I am doing something they already do, even though I might then decide to be the second group working on a hexagonal wheel after all (because mine will have stripes so of course it will be faster ;) ) |
| Olivier Thereaux | 5 | 5 | That bit works really well. |
| Melvin Carvalho | 4 | 4 | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | 4 | 4 | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | 4 | 4 | |
| Karl Dubost | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Renato Iannella | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Sreejumon Purayil | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Yaso Córdova | 4 | 2 | |
| Kai Hendry | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Lucinda Lewis | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Oystein Haaland | 4 | 3 | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | 5 | 4 | |
| Colin Snover | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Milan Young | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | 5 | 4 | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | 4 | 4 | This is reasonably easy – just get people to join, that’s it. |
| Veronica Cisneros | No opinion | No opinion | N/A |
| Dave Pawson | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Christophe Gueret | 5 | 5 | |
| Ana Amelio | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Lars Gunther | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Peter Rushforth | 5 | 5 | |
| Markus Lanthaler | 4 | 4 | |
| Adrian Roselli | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Deborah Dahl | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Annette Greiner | 4 | 4 | |
| Maurice Cherry | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Arthur Barstow | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Frode Kileng | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Markus Leutwyler | 4 | 4 | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Teotonio Simoes | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Wai Seto | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Jason Grigsby | No opinion | No opinion | |
| James Barnett | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Rob Marchand | No opinion | No opinion |
13. Group Operations
Rate the usability of any of the following operations you have carried out.
Summary
| Choice | All responders | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | No opinion | |
| Choosing a chair (via checkboxes on the participants page) | 4 | 4 | 11 | 5 | 21 | |
| Publishing a draft specification (available to Chairs only) | 1 | 2 | 4 | 38 | ||
| Publishing a final specification (available to Chairs only) | 1 | 4 | 40 | |||
| Making a final specification commitment (through the click-through form) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 39 | ||
Averages:
| Choices | All responders: |
|---|---|
| Value | |
| Choosing a chair (via checkboxes on the participants page) | 3.54 |
| Publishing a draft specification (available to Chairs only) | 3.43 |
| Publishing a final specification (available to Chairs only) | 3.60 |
| Making a final specification commitment (through the click-through form) | 3.33 |
Details
| Responder | Choosing a chair (via checkboxes on the participants page) | Publishing a draft specification (available to Chairs only) | Publishing a final specification (available to Chairs only) | Making a final specification commitment (through the click-through form) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Florent Georges | 5 | 3 | No opinion | No opinion | We don't have final spec yet. Publishing a draft is not very clear, in particular the fact that what is published is only a link pointing to the report hosted somewhere else. |
| Roger Cutler | 5 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Mike Amundsen | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | |
| Arthur Keen | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Torsten Straßer | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Tobie Langel | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Robert Sanderson | 4 | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Chaals Nevile | 5 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | (Except I had a chair imposed on me by Dom :P ) |
| Olivier Thereaux | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Melvin Carvalho | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | 2 | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | |
| Karl Dubost | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Renato Iannella | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | Issues with the URIs of draft/final specs need to be more clearly defined. The "Licensing Commitment" page is misleading as it says "no" for those who did not vote (yet) ! |
| Sreejumon Purayil | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Yaso Córdova | 1 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Kai Hendry | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | Haven't participated |
| Lucinda Lewis | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Oystein Haaland | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | 4 | 4 | 4 | No opinion | |
| Colin Snover | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Milan Young | 1 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | Our charter prevented us from choosing a chair. It was hardcoded in the charter. |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | 3 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | Haven't done half of these yet. |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Veronica Cisneros | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Dave Pawson | 5 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | 5 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Christophe Gueret | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | We have not assigned the chairs yet |
| Ana Amelio | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Lars Gunther | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Peter Rushforth | 3 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | The process for choosing a chair was not well described, perhaps intentionally. |
| Markus Lanthaler | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | 4 | |
| Adrian Roselli | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Deborah Dahl | 1 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Annette Greiner | 4 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | It's too soon for most of this question. Choosing a chair with the online poll was pretty easy. |
| Maurice Cherry | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Arthur Barstow | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Frode Kileng | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Markus Leutwyler | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | 3 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | Choosing a chair or replacements has not been in the hands of the group. Company A forms group chooses chairs and whene they move/chnage Company A hires replacement. |
| Teotonio Simoes | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Wai Seto | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| Jason Grigsby | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | |
| James Barnett | 1 | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | A single company created the group, chose the chair and the editors. They now claim the right to decide what "consensus" is - namely whatever they want. this is a flagrant abuse of standards process. When several companies asked for a co-chair to be named, the existing chair declared that "there was no consensus" for such a move. |
| Rob Marchand | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion | No opinion |
14. Suggestion Box
What can we do to improve the experience of participating in a Community Group or Business Group, tools you would find useful, or changes to enable you to work more effectively?
Details
| Responder | Suggestion Box |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | The simplest improvement would be to have an issue tracking system (more 3d millennium than Bugzilla). The second one would be to have more support for spec edition (saving editor drafts in a source control system, like Git, than flagging one as a public draft, or as a final spec 1.0, or 1.1, or 2.0). Maybe publishing automatically diff versions of specs. |
| Roger Cutler | More appropriate access controls for non-members. |
| Mike Amundsen | |
| Arthur Keen | |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | |
| Robert Sanderson | |
| Chaals Nevile | Cleaning the authentication so I don't have to log in differently would be grand. Mostly it's pretty good though. Has anyone posted a wiki page about running CGs in general - tips and traps for chairs especially? That's something that I might do if someone remembers to bug me about it... maybe when they are harassing me about /Guide (yes Mr Jacobs, I am looking at you ;) ) |
| Olivier Thereaux | |
| Melvin Carvalho | |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | none |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | |
| Karl Dubost | |
| Renato Iannella | It would be good if W3C Members saw the outcomes of the CGs. For example, when draft/final specs are created, they appear in the weekly newsletter. |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | Maybe it's a good idea to provide a translation to other languages. |
| Kai Hendry | Better tools, like a Github suite, BTS/Git/Wiki/IRC. Someone keeping momentum. |
| Lucinda Lewis | |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | I have no recommendations at the moment. After a period of 8 month the group is picking up and we are doing some progress. I believe the next months will be important to understand the limits of the platform/experience. As a chair it would be nice to have direct contact with W3C staff for discussing specific technical issues. |
| Colin Snover | Do not suffocate the process by making people wade through pages of consent agreements. |
| Milan Young | See above |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | * Radically simplify the interface * remove the username limit * use BrowserID / Mozilla Persona for sign in * have a mailing list interface at least as good as Google Mail * never use alerts for log in but only HTML forms (where my browser can remember my credentials) * enable us to change the left side links (Mailing list, Chat, Issue tracking) to custom destinations, as only use the wiki * remove the reset button on this survey and any forms you might have |
| Veronica Cisneros | I responded to this question in an information field above |
| Dave Pawson | Even if suggested, put up an outline process, timescales (if applicable) etc, to let users see what is expected |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | |
| Christophe Gueret | I think it's fine as it is |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | |
| Peter Rushforth | Seems like a pretty decent initiative. |
| Markus Lanthaler | |
| Adrian Roselli | |
| Deborah Dahl | |
| Annette Greiner | Maybe offer some advice on getting a group really going. You've done a nice job of making it easy to get a list of people; the next step is the hard part. |
| Maurice Cherry | |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | |
| Teotonio Simoes | |
| Wai Seto | |
| Jason Grigsby | |
| James Barnett | Community Groups should be abolished as soon as possible. If the W3C is unwilling to go that far, then at least 1) strict standards should be imposed on the selection of chairs and the definition of consensus 2) the AC should have the option of abolishing a group that abuses the CG process. |
| Rob Marchand |
15. Testimonial
To help W3C spread the word about Community and Business Groups, we invite you to provide a 1-paragraph testimonial about your Community Group or Business Group experience that you authorize us to publicize. This is purely optional.
Details
| Responder | Testimonial |
|---|---|
| Florent Georges | |
| Roger Cutler | The Oil, Gas and Chemicals Business Group is an experiment and definitely a work in progress. We do not know at this time how successful it will be, but our initial efforts have been encouraging. W3C staff have been incredibly helpful and patient. |
| Mike Amundsen | |
| Arthur Keen | |
| Torsten Straßer | |
| Tobie Langel | |
| Robert Sanderson | As a co-chair for the Open Annotation Community Group, I have found the context and credibility of the W3C to be invaluable in promoting adoption and engagement in the community. |
| Chaals Nevile | Yeah, please make sure I do this before th survey closes (and in general, that I fill it out fully :) ) |
| Olivier Thereaux | |
| Melvin Carvalho | Have thoroughly enjoyed the first year of Community Groups. Hoping to make huge steps forward in the next year, developing read/write web standards. Keep up the good work! |
| Dominik Tomaszuk | |
| Mohamed ZERGAOUI | |
| Karl Dubost | |
| Renato Iannella | The W3C Community Group program has provided the ODRL community the right tools, infrastructure, and governance policies to develop its latest specifications on policy languages. |
| Sreejumon Purayil | |
| Yaso Córdova | |
| Kai Hendry | |
| Lucinda Lewis | Community and Business Groups provide a valuable opportunity for companies to advance technology through a multitude of channels. Knowledge is power, but the ability to execute upon knowledge gained may expose weaknesses in the developed workflow that could benefit the community. This community effort is a valuable tool. If business processes developed within the community could be tested within the community, the results could be even more powerful. |
| Oystein Haaland | |
| Paolo Ciccarese | I am very pleased with my participation to the Community Groups initiative. I really like the idea of having a platform enabling focused discussion groups. And I really appreciate the great flexibility of this lightweight approach. |
| Colin Snover | |
| Milan Young | If you will permit a negative testimonial, please let me know. |
| Silvia Pfeiffer | |
| Jan-Christoph Borchardt | |
| Veronica Cisneros | |
| Dave Pawson | A fair answer to the criticisms of the W3C process. |
| Emmanuel Desmontils | |
| Christophe Gueret | |
| Ana Amelio | |
| Lars Gunther | |
| Peter Rushforth | |
| Markus Lanthaler | |
| Adrian Roselli | |
| Deborah Dahl | |
| Annette Greiner | |
| Maurice Cherry | |
| Arthur Barstow | |
| Frode Kileng | |
| Markus Leutwyler | |
| Vidhya Gholkar | |
| Teotonio Simoes | |
| Wai Seto | |
| Jason Grigsby | |
| James Barnett | The Speech + HTML group that I have participated in has shown a total disrespect for consensus, previous work in the area, and progress towards a true standard. I heartily recommend it to people who seek to undermine the entire standards process. |
| Rob Marchand |
More details on responses
- Florent Georges: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 15:21 (UTC)
- Roger Cutler: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 15:38 (UTC)
- Mike Amundsen: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 15:48 (UTC)
- Arthur Keen: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 16:11 (UTC)
- Torsten Straßer: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 16:48 (UTC)
- Tobie Langel: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 17:43 (UTC)
- Robert Sanderson: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 19:35 (UTC)
- Chaals Nevile: last responded on 1, August 2012 at 21:13 (UTC)
- Olivier Thereaux: last responded on 2, August 2012 at 09:09 (UTC)
- Melvin Carvalho: last responded on 2, August 2012 at 12:45 (UTC)
- Dominik Tomaszuk: last responded on 2, August 2012 at 13:41 (UTC)
- Mohamed ZERGAOUI: last responded on 3, August 2012 at 10:49 (UTC)
- Karl Dubost: last responded on 3, August 2012 at 17:06 (UTC)
- Renato Iannella: last responded on 7, August 2012 at 02:59 (UTC)
- Sreejumon Purayil: last responded on 8, August 2012 at 05:15 (UTC)
- Yaso Córdova: last responded on 13, August 2012 at 12:56 (UTC)
- Kai Hendry: last responded on 13, August 2012 at 14:38 (UTC)
- Lucinda Lewis: last responded on 6, September 2012 at 00:59 (UTC)
- Oystein Haaland: last responded on 6, September 2012 at 06:29 (UTC)
- Paolo Ciccarese: last responded on 6, September 2012 at 14:42 (UTC)
- Colin Snover: last responded on 6, September 2012 at 22:57 (UTC)
- Milan Young: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 00:06 (UTC)
- Silvia Pfeiffer: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 00:52 (UTC)
- Jan-Christoph Borchardt: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 04:58 (UTC)
- Veronica Cisneros: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 05:02 (UTC)
- Dave Pawson: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 05:48 (UTC)
- Emmanuel Desmontils: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 06:04 (UTC)
- Christophe Gueret: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 06:15 (UTC)
- Ana Amelio: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 06:57 (UTC)
- Lars Gunther: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 07:27 (UTC)
- Peter Rushforth: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 13:06 (UTC)
- Markus Lanthaler: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 15:46 (UTC)
- Adrian Roselli: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 15:52 (UTC)
- Deborah Dahl: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 18:55 (UTC)
- Annette Greiner: last responded on 7, September 2012 at 22:49 (UTC)
- Maurice Cherry: last responded on 8, September 2012 at 13:49 (UTC)
- Arthur Barstow: last responded on 9, September 2012 at 12:11 (UTC)
- Frode Kileng: last responded on 10, September 2012 at 07:53 (UTC)
- Markus Leutwyler: last responded on 10, September 2012 at 08:34 (UTC)
- Vidhya Gholkar: last responded on 10, September 2012 at 09:01 (UTC)
- Teotonio Simoes: last responded on 10, September 2012 at 11:30 (UTC)
- Wai Seto: last responded on 11, September 2012 at 00:16 (UTC)
- Jason Grigsby: last responded on 13, September 2012 at 23:49 (UTC)
- James Barnett: last responded on 21, September 2012 at 01:17 (UTC)
- Rob Marchand: last responded on 27, September 2012 at 20:27 (UTC)
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