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Results of Questionnaire Determining which Community and Business Groups transitions to Working Group

The results of this questionnaire are available to anybody. In addition, answers are sent to the following email address: team-community-process@w3.org

This questionnaire was open from 2014-04-18 to 2014-05-18.

31 answers have been received.

Jump to results for question:

  1. Your Community Group or Business Group
  2. State of your Community Group or Business Group
  3. Goal of your Community Group or Business Group
  4. Status of the spec of your Community Group or Business Group
  5. No transition to a Working Group
  6. Open comments

1. Your Community Group or Business Group

Please, name the Community Group or Business Group for which you are submitting answers.

Details

Responder Name of your Community Group or Business Group
Paul Boyes Automotive Business Group
Paola Di Maio SEMANTIC WEB INTERFACES (SWI) SIG
Max Froumentin Web History Community Group
Roger Cutler Oil, Gas and Chemicals Business Group
Markus Lanthaler Hydra
John Cowan MicroXML
Andrew Cooke Livestock Data Interchange Standards
Renato Iannella ODRL
David Singer Text Tracks
John Willson http://www.w3.org/community/sodata/
Ian Hickson WHATCG
Florian Daniel Interactive APIs
Florent Georges EXPath
Bart van Leeuwen Emergency Information
Stephan Dreyer Age Labels Data Model Community Group
Jean-Paul Calbimonte RDF Stream Processing Community Group
Andrea Perego Locations and Addresses Community Group
Uche Ogbuji MicroXML Community Group
Brian Kardell extensible web community group
Paolo Ciccarese Open Annotation CG
Manu Sporny Web Payments Community Group
Richard Wallis Schema Bib Extend
Christophe Gueret Development Linked Data (DLD)
Sangwhan Moon Web Signage Business Group
David Wood Permanent Identifier Community Group
Tom Breton Argument Representation
Simon St.Laurent CSS Selectors as Fragment Identifiers
Martin Alvarez Open Data Spain
Andreas Kuckartz Federated Social Web Community Group
Jonathan Corson-Rikert VIVO Open Research Networking
Russell Potter Cloud Computing Community Group

2. State of your Community Group or Business Group

Is your Community Group or Business Group:

Summary

ChoiceAll responders
Results
Active and ongoing and nearing completion 7
Inactive because it has completed its work 4
Active and ongoing and far from completion 14
Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum 6

Details

Responder State of your Community Group or Business Group
Paul Boyes Active and ongoing and nearing completion
Paola Di Maio Active and ongoing and far from completion
Max Froumentin Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
Roger Cutler Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
Markus Lanthaler Active and ongoing and nearing completion
John Cowan Inactive because it has completed its work
Andrew Cooke Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
Renato Iannella Active and ongoing and nearing completion
David Singer Active and ongoing and nearing completion
John Willson Active and ongoing and far from completion
Ian Hickson Active and ongoing and nearing completion
Florian Daniel Active and ongoing and far from completion
Florent Georges Active and ongoing and far from completion
Bart van Leeuwen Active and ongoing and far from completion
Stephan Dreyer Active and ongoing and nearing completion
Jean-Paul Calbimonte Active and ongoing and far from completion
Andrea Perego Active and ongoing and far from completion
Uche Ogbuji Inactive because it has completed its work
Brian Kardell Active and ongoing and far from completion
Paolo Ciccarese Active and ongoing and far from completion
Manu Sporny Active and ongoing and far from completion
Richard Wallis Active and ongoing and nearing completion
Christophe Gueret Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
Sangwhan Moon Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
David Wood Active and ongoing and far from completion
Tom Breton Inactive because the original scope is no longer relevant or because the CG never got momentum
Simon St.Laurent Inactive because it has completed its work
Martin Alvarez Active and ongoing and far from completion
Andreas Kuckartz Active and ongoing and far from completion
Jonathan Corson-Rikert Active and ongoing and far from completion
Russell Potter Inactive because it has completed its work

3. Goal of your Community Group or Business Group

Is the goal of your Community Group or Business Group:

Summary

ChoiceAll responders
Results
To provide a specification 18
To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere 6
Other (please specify) 7

Details

Responder Goal of your Community Group or Business GroupYou checked "other", please specify
Paul Boyes To provide a specification
Paola Di Maio To provide a specification a high level specificationn
Max Froumentin To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Roger Cutler Other (please specify) Study and possibly demonstrate applications of Semantic Web technology to business issues in those industries. An example of the topics the Group could focus on is information describing the equipment used in major capital projects, with an eye to integration of that information with other major parts of the value chain such as production, maintenance and facilities engineering information systems. Another possibility is open publishing of catalog or metadata records according to published ontologies so that the published records can be queried, aggregated and analyzed in order to improve the efficiency and intelligence of searching for relevant resources.
Markus Lanthaler To provide a specification
John Cowan To provide a specification
Andrew Cooke To provide a specification
Renato Iannella To provide a specification
David Singer To provide a specification
John Willson To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Ian Hickson To provide a specification
Florian Daniel To provide a specification
Florent Georges To provide a specification Actually a set of specs (some of them have already been completed, others are under development).
Bart van Leeuwen Other (please specify) Create a entry point for practisioners to find specifications
Stephan Dreyer To provide a specification
Jean-Paul Calbimonte To provide a specification
Andrea Perego To provide a specification
Uche Ogbuji To provide a specification
Brian Kardell To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Paolo Ciccarese To provide a specification
Manu Sporny Other (please specify) In general, this Community Group provides an inclusive venue where web payment solutions, regardless of their origin, can be incubated, evaluated, refined, and tested. The focus of the group is to promote payment innovations based primarily on their technical merit. This approach invites competing technical designs to be submitted and incubated in the same group. The hope is that this strategy will lead to either the merging of the best aspects of each technical design, or a clear differentiation emerging between alternative designs. If specifications emerge out of this process, they're expected to be promoted to be adopted by W3C Working Groups as work items.
Richard Wallis Other (please specify) To make proposals to the Web Schemas group and then provide guidelines and discussion.

Most proposals made, now transitioning towards a guidelines role
Christophe Gueret To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Sangwhan Moon To provide a specification
David Wood Other (please specify) The Permanent Identifier Community Group maintains a secure, permanent UL re-direction service for the Web located at w3id.org. Web applications that deal with Linked Data often need to specify and use URLs that are very stable.
Tom Breton Other (please specify) Per our mission statement, our goal is to "recommend" a specification,
but we "do not necessarily commit to creating a novel" one. So either
A or B could apply.
Simon St.Laurent To provide a specification
Martin Alvarez To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Andreas Kuckartz Other (please specify) It mostly is a meeting place for people interested in decentralized or distributed social media.

It likely will be replaced by a W3C Social Interest Group in the future.
Jonathan Corson-Rikert To be a discussion forum for specifications done elsewhere
Russell Potter To provide a specification

4. Status of the spec of your Community Group or Business Group

What are your specification transition plans?

Summary

ChoiceAll responders
Results
We have already handed off all or part of a specification to a Working Group. 1
We plan to request that a specification transition to a Working Group within six months. 1
We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so. 9
We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question). 10

(10 responses didn't contain an answer to this question)

Details

Responder Status of the spec of your Community Group or Business Group
Paul Boyes We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Paola Di Maio We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Max Froumentin
Roger Cutler
Markus Lanthaler We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
John Cowan We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Andrew Cooke We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Renato Iannella We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
David Singer We have already handed off all or part of a specification to a Working Group.
John Willson
Ian Hickson We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Florian Daniel We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Florent Georges We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Bart van Leeuwen
Stephan Dreyer We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Jean-Paul Calbimonte We plan to request that a specification transition to a Working Group within six months.
Andrea Perego We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Uche Ogbuji We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Brian Kardell We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Paolo Ciccarese We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Manu Sporny We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Richard Wallis
Christophe Gueret
Sangwhan Moon We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
David Wood
Tom Breton
Simon St.Laurent We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.
Martin Alvarez
Andreas Kuckartz
Jonathan Corson-Rikert We do not plan to transition a specification to a Working Group (provide details in the next question).
Russell Potter We have a specification that is a candidate for transition to a Working Group but have no schedule yet for doing so.

5. No transition to a Working Group

summary | by responder | by choice

We do not expect to transition to a Working Group for the following reasons (check all that apply):

Summary

ChoiceAll responders
Results
Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet. 5
Too narrow, not a key part of the Open Web Platform. 1
A Community Group or Business Group is good enough, Working Groups have too much bureaucracy. 3
We suspect that key players will not want to make Working Group patent commitments. 1
Too many key players are not Members of W3C and would not want to follow the work into a Working Group. 2
Other (please specify). 4

(15 responses didn't contain an answer to this question)

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View by responder

Details

Responder No transition to a Working GroupYou checked "other", please specify
Paul Boyes
Paola Di Maio
  • Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
 exploratory work, community is still loosely engaged so far
maybe if one or two ears if things mature
Max Froumentin
Roger Cutler
Markus Lanthaler
John Cowan
Andrew Cooke
  • Too many key players are not Members of W3C and would not want to follow the work into a Working Group.
Renato Iannella
David Singer
John Willson
Ian Hickson
  • A Community Group or Business Group is good enough, Working Groups have too much bureaucracy.
  • Other (please specify).
 The W3C WG process is harmful.
Florian Daniel
  • Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
Florent Georges
  • A Community Group or Business Group is good enough, Working Groups have too much bureaucracy.
 We haven't really thought about this, but I guess the current status is good enough (I guess).
Bart van Leeuwen
Stephan Dreyer
  • Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
  • Too many key players are not Members of W3C and would not want to follow the work into a Working Group.
Jean-Paul Calbimonte
Andrea Perego
  • Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
Uche Ogbuji
Brian Kardell
  • Other (please specify).
 We hand up ideas and proposed prollyfilled implementations to WGs and have members who participate in various roles as champions to working groups and vendors.
Paolo Ciccarese
Manu Sporny
  • Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
Richard Wallis
Christophe Gueret
Sangwhan Moon
  • Too narrow, not a key part of the Open Web Platform.
  • A Community Group or Business Group is good enough, Working Groups have too much bureaucracy.
  • We suspect that key players will not want to make Working Group patent commitments.
  • Other (please specify).
 Group consists almost entirely of non-technical members, making technical discussions very difficult. Without the technical discussions completed there is no way to either generate a specification nor bring a change request to working groups and expect it to be done, the latter especially because of the fact that it's a extremely domain specific use case which most working group members care very little about.
David Wood
Tom Breton
Simon St.Laurent
Martin Alvarez
Andreas Kuckartz
Jonathan Corson-Rikert
  • Other (please specify).
 We want to interact with a number of other related ontology and identifier efforts such as the HCLSIG/LLD/DatasetDescription effort, ORCID, SciENcv
Russell Potter

View by choice

ChoiceResponders
Too early, insufficient number of implementations yet.
  • Paola Di Maio
  • Florian Daniel
  • Stephan Dreyer
  • Andrea Perego
  • Manu Sporny
Too narrow, not a key part of the Open Web Platform.
  • Sangwhan Moon
A Community Group or Business Group is good enough, Working Groups have too much bureaucracy.
  • Ian Hickson
  • Florent Georges
  • Sangwhan Moon
We suspect that key players will not want to make Working Group patent commitments.
  • Sangwhan Moon
Too many key players are not Members of W3C and would not want to follow the work into a Working Group.
  • Andrew Cooke
  • Stephan Dreyer
Other (please specify).
  • Ian Hickson
  • Brian Kardell
  • Sangwhan Moon
  • Jonathan Corson-Rikert

6. Open comments

Please, let us us know of anything you feel is relevant to complete your answers.

Details

Responder Open comments
Paul Boyes
Paola Di Maio
Max Froumentin
Roger Cutler Despite the good faith efforts of several people from Chevron and Statoil, the group never got enough commitment from industry subject matter experts. I have left a "Lessons Learned" document at http://www.w3.org/community/oilgaschem/wiki/OGCWG_-_Lessons_Learned
Markus Lanthaler It would be great if there would be some process for community groups that want to move their specifications to Rec Track. For example, not all are lucky enough to have participation from W3C member companies.
John Cowan We have a couple of implementations now but have seriously lost momentum. Creating a WG might be able to restore that.
Andrew Cooke Many of our participants were not W3C members and did not want to get involved in something that could transition to a working group. For some in larger organisations, getting their legal department to review the W3C agreement was too time consuming and onerous. We carried out the discussions in LinkedIn groups instead, with around 100 participants.
Renato Iannella We are still unclear on how to propose the transition
David Singer
John Willson
Ian Hickson The correct answer to Question 3 for this group is just "Active and ongoing". Completion is a state that a good specification never reaches before it's irrelevant.
Florian Daniel We are working on an implementation leveraging on the annotation format to be developed. This is ongoing work carried out in parallel with the development of the actual specification maintained in the group's wiki.
Florent Georges
Bart van Leeuwen
Stephan Dreyer
Jean-Paul Calbimonte The community group is a good option to build an interest group, have discussions, meetings, etc. But for preparing a specification, the commitment of members is a bit low. The transition to a Working group might be needed to get things going quicker. (at least in the community group I am reporting on).
Andrea Perego
Uche Ogbuji There has been discussion of bringing this work to the W3C XML Core WG but I don't think we've pressed seriously on doing so yet. We probably should.
Brian Kardell
Paolo Ciccarese
Manu Sporny I have two areas of concern wrt. Community Groups:

1. The technical community's confusion around exactly what a CG is and does at W3C (and the 3rd party misrepresentation as a result).
2. The distance W3C places between itself and CGs that are doing work vital for the long-term viability of W3C.

Confusion around CGs
--------------------

One area of concern wrt. Community Groups is the confusion that most people outside of the W3C have about them. When you say W3C XYZ Community Group, people that know nothing of the difference between a CG, IG, BG, XG, or WG just drop that terminology and say "W3C XYZ Group".

For example, I've seen journalists do this multiple times even though I have told them very directly to "make sure you put the 'Community Group' language in there". Just last week one of them introduced me (I wasn't present) as the "Chairman of the W3C". This sort of glaring oversight has typically ended up w/ someone from W3C contacting me and telling me directly that I'm misrepresenting W3C, even though I did no such thing. I try very hard to make it clear that a CG is engaged in "not officially sanctioned" work (which is frustrating in it's own right because it's one of the hardest things to do at W3C - start something new). W3C's response is also demoralizing to the community: "Oh, anyone can start a Community Group." (said in a condescending tone, as W3C distances itself from any group that's even remotely controversial).

This sort of behavior by W3C staff has happened multiple times during the Web Payment CG's existence, and it's very frustrating. It's led to W3C member companies using misstatements in the press to put pressure on our group via W3C staffers. I do admit that not everything we've said in public was perfect. There have been errors on my (our) side. When an error has occured, however, Ian Jacobs and I worked together (successfully) to correct the issues. I thought things were resolved.

However, a W3C staff member cornered me at the Web Payments Workshop and let me know that W3M continues to believe that I continue to misrepresent W3C. We had a very heated and condescending exchange about it. I kept reassuring the W3C staffer that I was doing everything in my power to try and represent the complexities of the interrelationships between the W3C member companies, W3C staff, WGs, and the Web Payments CG. The staffer kept reiterating that I wasn't doing that. When I asked the staffer why no one else in W3C was raising the issue with me, he said that W3M wasn't saying anything about their disagreement with the way things were operating because "they're nicer than I am".

W3C Ambivalence Toward CGs
--------------------------

So, now I'm concerned that W3C is saying things to other groups about the Web Payments work that is going to ultimately harm what we're attempting to achieve (which is a set of payment standards for the Web). I know of one instance where we were invited to speak at the IETF about Web Payments and all of a sudden were not invited to speak at the IETF. My concern (which we'll never be able to verify) is that someone at W3C convinced someone at IETF to drop me from the speaker list and invite someone else instead.

This sort of doubt is toxic to standards and consensus building. I knew there were problems, but I thought they were taken care of. The W3C staffer has told me that they're not taken care of. So, now I don't know what to think other than I can't really count on W3C to tell me when something is wrong. Either I'm thankful to the W3C staffer for telling me the truth, or I'm concerned that that particular staff member is in W3C, poisoning the well.

I understand why the W3C Community Groups are a great deal for W3C. You incubate technologies and are able to attract new members (and advance the Web, in the best case) while being able to politically distance yourself from bad actors by stating that the groups "aren't official". The unfortunate downside of that strategy is that you inevitably end up treating the leaders of those groups like pariahs, which trickles into what the group feels about W3C.

There are a number of Web Payments CG members now that are annoyed at the ambivalence shown towards the group by W3C, even though I've been pretty consistently defending some of the decisions W3C has made over the past several years to those doubting the organization. Some are convinced that W3C isn't clued in at all wrt. the payments and identity stuff (except for Dave Raggett, Wendy Seltzer, and Stephane Boyera). It's worse than "No W3C Support". In some cases it has felt like, at best, W3C staff was ambivalent, and worse, they were actively working against us (as in the IETF un-invite case).

There are a few things I can think of that may improve the situation:

1. Be proactive and honest with the CGs about what the W3C/member orgs think about them and resolve issues quickly. Don't let a CG learn about an issue through a W3C staffer back-channel.
2. Make sure to internalize the fact that W3C's future depends, in part, on these CGs. Treat the work that they're doing accordingly because the return (huge) on investment (miniscule) that W3C is getting is substantial.
3. Provide a guide for how CGs should use particular language. e.g. "Do not say that you work on specifications". PayPal, via W3C, forced us to remove any mention that we're working on specifications on our community page even though W3C continues to use that language when discussing W3C CGs (you even do it in this poll).
4. Apply the guides evenly across all CGs. For example, some CGs can say they're working on "specifications". The Web Payments CG is prohibited from doing so because of one particular W3C member organization.

I understand that this is new to all of us and it'll take time to work out the kinks. Hopefully the bits above will help move us in that direction.
Richard Wallis
Christophe Gueret We had some difficulties gaining momentum and I myself take part of several other groups where I hardly contribute anything. I wonder how successful groups that are active manage(d) to get things up and running, could be a good idea to do a best practices or tips&tricks guide for community/business groups.
Sangwhan Moon The goal of a business group is extremely unclear, and the lack of proper technical discussions happening within the group (certain group members explicitly asked to not go to deep into technical discussions) makes the meetings/discussion have no particular goal to aim for.

I believe the direction of business groups should be properly chartered to be able to produce useful technical outcome, rather than sit around a table and discuss abstract ideas to justify a meeting for the sake of a meeting.
David Wood
Tom Breton
Simon St.Laurent We have been basically on pause - not very much has changed in the last year, but the spec itself is largely complete. It didn't seem like there was a good home for this work. It uses CSS, but is more about hypertext, in a context that isn't necessarily the HTML group's focus.

With the recent workshop on annotation, I'm hoping that there may be something emerging in the W3C that could give this a home as a small part of its work.
Martin Alvarez Although this group is not very active, up to date, this group is useful as a mechanism for Spanish organizations to adopt standards.
Andreas Kuckartz We are waiting for the creation of the new Social Interest Group and the Working Groups!
Jonathan Corson-Rikert The process of becoming a group member -- the questions asked about representing one's employer -- is still seen as intimidating by many prospective members. I understand the reasons for this when groups are intended for specification development but I believe this hurdle continues to inhibit participation
Russell Potter

More details on responses

  • Paul Boyes: last responded on 18, April 2014 at 18:03 (UTC)
  • Paola Di Maio: last responded on 19, April 2014 at 02:14 (UTC)
  • Max Froumentin: last responded on 19, April 2014 at 12:54 (UTC)
  • Roger Cutler: last responded on 19, April 2014 at 14:13 (UTC)
  • Markus Lanthaler: last responded on 19, April 2014 at 15:24 (UTC)
  • John Cowan: last responded on 19, April 2014 at 18:31 (UTC)
  • Andrew Cooke: last responded on 20, April 2014 at 04:52 (UTC)
  • Renato Iannella: last responded on 21, April 2014 at 11:29 (UTC)
  • David Singer: last responded on 21, April 2014 at 18:46 (UTC)
  • John Willson: last responded on 22, April 2014 at 13:52 (UTC)
  • Ian Hickson: last responded on 22, April 2014 at 22:04 (UTC)
  • Florian Daniel: last responded on 24, April 2014 at 13:39 (UTC)
  • Florent Georges: last responded on 24, April 2014 at 16:49 (UTC)
  • Bart van Leeuwen: last responded on 24, April 2014 at 20:29 (UTC)
  • Stephan Dreyer: last responded on 25, April 2014 at 13:15 (UTC)
  • Jean-Paul Calbimonte: last responded on 25, April 2014 at 17:42 (UTC)
  • Andrea Perego: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 16:27 (UTC)
  • Uche Ogbuji: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 16:44 (UTC)
  • Brian Kardell: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 17:22 (UTC)
  • Paolo Ciccarese: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 18:13 (UTC)
  • Manu Sporny: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 18:42 (UTC)
  • Richard Wallis: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 19:19 (UTC)
  • Christophe Gueret: last responded on 6, May 2014 at 21:04 (UTC)
  • Sangwhan Moon: last responded on 7, May 2014 at 13:01 (UTC)
  • David Wood: last responded on 7, May 2014 at 14:26 (UTC)
  • Tom Breton: last responded on 7, May 2014 at 20:02 (UTC)
  • Simon St.Laurent: last responded on 9, May 2014 at 12:04 (UTC)
  • Martin Alvarez: last responded on 9, May 2014 at 14:46 (UTC)
  • Andreas Kuckartz: last responded on 11, May 2014 at 20:19 (UTC)
  • Jonathan Corson-Rikert: last responded on 12, May 2014 at 01:06 (UTC)
  • Russell Potter: last responded on 15, May 2014 at 05:28 (UTC)

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