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[NEW DRAFT] The Art of Consensus

This Guidebook is the collected wisdom of the W3C Group Chairs and other collaborators.

This page is Member-only

About the Guide

This Guidebook is intended to complement the W3C Membership Agreement and the W3C Process. This index page is Member-only, although some of the resources in the Guidebook are public.

You are expected to be familiar with the parts of this Guidebook that affect your work. Working Group chairs should get a "tour" from their team contact. Then take a look again, for example, if you're going to hold a face-to-face meeting; read the section on meetings and work with its owner, Susan, to be sure you understand what's written there, and to record any valuable knowledge you pick up along the way.

This Guidebook is generally edited by the W3C Team, but chairs and collaborators are welcome to edit it, keep it up to date by adding/pruning resources and tips to it. Be sure to update all relevant facets when you edit this page.

This is a proposal for a reorganization of the Art of Consensus Guide into multiple faceted views.

Table of Contents: Facets

• Timeline
  • Create a Group
  • Early life of a group
  • Maturing Group
  • Maintenance mode
  • Closing a group
• Roles
  • About W3C Roles
  • Every WG Participant
  • Chair and Scribe
  • Staff Contact
  • Editor
  • Test lead
  • Liaison
• Activities
  • Build Consensus
  • Develop specification
  • Patent Stuff
  • Test and Implement
  • Promote your work
• Tools
  • blog
  • mailing-list
  • wiki
  • tracking tools
  • Polls and Questionaire
  • IRC
  • teleconference bridge

Facet 1: Timeline

Create a Group

• how to send a Member Submission Request which may prompt the creation of a group
• New group charter generator
• Alternatively, create an incubator group
• schedule a recurring teleconference
• set up collaborative tools: blog, wiki

Early life of a group

• start issues tracking with tracker or bugzilla
• set up tracker for action items management
• run a meeting on IRC
  • Quick start guide for setting up tools for managing an agenda, generating minutes, and updating issues lists
  • Scribe 101: Taking meeting minutes using W3C IRC tools
  • Individual IRC tools ("bots"):
    • Zakim for bridge management
    • RRSAgent for minutes management
    • Trackbot for issue management (using Tracker) during an IRC-based meeting
• Face-to-face meetings
  • Send face-to-face meeting information to calreq@w3.org; that information appears on the Member events calendar
  • Host a face-to-face meeting. Note the Policy Regarding Non-Disclosure Agreements and W3C Meetings
• find editors
• the staff contact gets editors an account (jigedit or CVS) to edit the w3.org website
• editors can work with
  • JigEdit,
  • WebDAV,
  • or (for experts) CVS
• start testing. get dev.w3.org accounts for participants to work on a test suite

Maturing Group

• how to handle REC track transitions: Transition requirements (for First Public Draft, Last Call, CR, PR, REC, etc.)
• promoting the spec with a blog, Talks
• release testimonial guidelines
• use the Last Call comments tracker to track public comments on specifications and build a disposition of comments
• if you used Bugzilla for issues tracking, bugs2html can let you create a disposition of comments
• implementation report

Maintenance mode

•  ???

Closing a group

• Publishing a final XG Report

Facet 2: by Role

About W3C Roles

• Chair's role
• Editor's role
• Editor, Author, Contributor Policies
• Staff Contact's role
• Liaison's role (Note: Per section 10 of the Process Document, liaisons MUST be coordinated by the Team due to requirements for public communication; patent, copyright, and other IPR policies; confidentiality agreements; and mutual membership agreements.)

Every WG Participant

• Join a group (see also Invited Expert Policy)
• consider taking on roles: editor, test lead, etc.

Chair and Scribe

• Guidance: On Chairing a group
• schedule a recurring teleconference
• organising a Face-to-face meetings
  • Send face-to-face meeting information to calreq@w3.org; that information appears on the Member events calendar
  • Host a face-to-face meeting. Note the Policy Regarding Non-Disclosure Agreements and W3C Meetings
• Quick start guide for setting up tools for managing an agenda, generating minutes, and updating issues lists
• Scribe 101: Taking meeting minutes using W3C IRC tools
• Individual IRC tools ("bots"):
  • Zakim for bridge management
  • RRSAgent for minutes management
  • Trackbot for issue management (using Tracker) during an IRC-based meeting
• Guidance for Chairs on Staff participation
• XG Chairs: For an account to let you or select XG participants write to w3.org, please contact Ian Jacobs
• Transition requirements (for First Public Draft, Last Call, CR, PR, REC, etc.)

Staff Contact

• work with systems team to set up mailing-list, blog, wiki
• Get editors an account (jigedit or CVS) to edit the w3.org website
• Publication Rules (a.k.a Pubrules) and links to related policies (e.g., [a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/13-nsuri namespaces] MIME type registration, and version management)

Editor

• information about CVS
• Publication Rules (a.k.a Pubrules) and links to related policies (e.g., [a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/13-nsuri namespaces] MIME type registration, and version management)
• W3C Editors home page
• Discussion about specifications on spec-prod@w3.org
• W3C Manual of Style

Test lead

• information about CVS

Liaison

Facet 3: activities of a group

Build Consensus

• schedule a recurring teleconference
• learn how to set up an ad-hoc meeting with zakim
• start a mailing-list
• get a wiki for collaborative editing

Develop specification

• Know the rules
  • Publication Rules (a.k.a Pubrules) and links to related policies (e.g., [a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/13-nsuri namespaces] MIME type registration, and version management)
  • Transition requirements (for First Public Draft, Last Call, CR, PR, REC, etc.)
  • Tips for getting to Recommendation faster
  • Use of W3C or Other Technologies within W3C Recommendations
• Get editor(s), write drafts
  • W3C Editors home page
  • Discussion about specifications on spec-prod@w3.org
  • W3C Manual of Style
  • You can write a spec using the ">W3C XML Specification DTD (XMLspec), well-supported by Norman Walsh.
• Write better specs: QA resources
  • Specification Guidelines
  • Handbook for QA in groups and QA Framework primer
  • See also "testing" stuff
• Draft review, issue tracking
  • get Tracker for issues tracking
  • alternatively bugzilla can be used to track issues in a specification
    • … and create a disposition of comments with bugs2html
  • Trackbot, an IRC-based interface to tracker
  • Tips on securing document reviews

Patent Stuff

• W3C Patent Policy
• Commentary: FAQ, Summary and Business Benefits
• Implementation (IPP)
• What's in it for Chairs?
• Policies for Contribution of Test Cases
• ...more questions? Contact the W3C Patents and Standards Interest Group (PSIG)

Test and Implement

• Test Development FAQ
• Mobile Web Test Harness Web-based harness for browsers test suites
• test license @@

Promote your work

• Set up a Working-Group blog
• Use the Upcoming Talks form; talks publicized on the W3C home page, Member Newsletter, Weekly News (approximately 8000 subscribers)
• release testimonial guidelines
• Give a testimonial about how W3C participation has been beneficial to your organization. (Current testimonials)
• HTML Slidy for slide presentations
• Notes on Accessible Presentations

Facet 4: by Tool

blog

• Set up a Working-Group blog

mailing-list

• request the creation of a list
• manage participants: Mailing List Audit (who is subscribed, information about lists), List Management Tool, SmartList Remote Maintainers Guide
• No spam: Spam filtering options
• Mailing Lists Search service

wiki

• get a wiki for collaborative editing
• manage a wiki

tracking tools

• Tracker for issues and action items tracking
• Trackbot, an IRC-based interface to tracker
• bugzilla can be used to track issues in a specification, and bugs in software/test suite

Polls and Questionaire

• WBS is a web-based polling and questionaire system

IRC

• Quick start guide for setting up tools for managing an agenda, generating minutes, and updating issues lists
• Scribe 101: Taking meeting minutes using W3C IRC tools
• Individual IRC tools ("bots"):
  • Zakim for bridge management
  • RRSAgent for minutes management
  • Trackbot for issue management (using Tracker) during an IRC-based meeting

teleconference bridge

• schedule a recurring teleconference
• zakim help