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WorkMode

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NOTE: the Web Events Working Group closed in November 2013 because it completed its technical work with the publication of the 10 October 2013 Touch Events Recommendation. As such, this document is NO longer maintained.


The purpose of this wiki is to consolidate some of the Web Events WG's Real Working Modes including: Participation and Communication, Meetings, Consensus, Mail List usage, links to important resources, etc.

Note the WG's Charter formally defines many aspects of the group's working mode. In all cases, the Charter and/or the W3C Process Document overrides the information in this wiki. Nevertheless, this wiki contains additional information about how the group really works and as such, this information may be particularly useful to new members of the WG.

This document is a Living Document and as such will change. Members of the WG are encouraged to edit (e.g. to embellish, correct, etc.) the information in this document.


Participation and Communication

Web Events' formal Participation and Communication models are documented in the Participation and Communications sections of its Charter, respectively.

Strictly speaking, only the Chair and Editors have firm participation requirements. However, all WG members are strongly encouraged to participate in all of the specifications in progress.

A WG member may participate in various ways including:

Participation from the Public, via our Public mail lists is also welcome, provided comments, contributions, etc. are consistent with the W3C Patent Policy. The group uses the following mail lists:

The w3cwebevents Twitter account is used to make public announcements about the group's Specs and documents.

The Technical Reports Process (What is an Editor's Draft?)

Please see the WebApps WG's The Technical Reports Process (What is an Editor's Draft?) work mode wiki.

Editors

Please see the WebApps WG's Editors work mode wiki.

Bugs, Issues and Actions

The WG uses Tracker to record and track Web Events' Actions.

The WG uses Web Events' Tracker to track issues.

Note that Tracker scans public-webevents e-mails for the patterns "ISSUE-NNN" and "ACTION-NNN" (where NNN is an issue or action number). If that pattern is found, the URI of the e-mail in the public-webevents archive will automatically be included in the database record for that issue or action.


Resources:

Patent Policy

The WG's Charter defines the Patent Policy for this group:

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

A consequence of the group's Patent Policy is that inputs for the group's specifications from non-WG participants is not permitted. See the W3C Patent Policy FAQ titled How should Working Groups handle contributions from non-participants (e.g., meeting guests or on public lists)? for more information about contributions from non-WG participants.

Meetings? What Meetings?

Most of the technical work is done via the mail list and IRC, rather than formal meetings.

For more information on the Web Events meetings see the Telecon schedule. The Web Events group may also have 2-3 face-to-face (f2f) meetings per year.

The W3C usually has an annual All Working Group f2f meeting week and this group will likely meet face-to-face during that week.

See Web Events' Meeting Wiki for information about the group's formal meetings.

Consensus and Call for Consensus

Consensus is a very important part of the W3C process and is formally codified in the Process Document as follows:

Consensus is a core value of the W3C. To promote consensus, the W3C process requires Chairs to ensure that groups consider all legitimate views and objections, and endeavor to resolve them, whether these views and objections are expressed by the active participants of the group or by others (e.g., another W3C group, a group in another organization, or the general public).


Since much of Web Events' work is done without formal meetings, the group uses a Call for Consensus (aka CfC) mechanism (typically email) to formally gather input on a specific question such as Is spec X ready to publish as a Last Call Working Draft?. When a CfC is issued, an explicit response from WG members is preferred and note that the lack of a response will always be considered assent i.e. agreement with the proposal.

Most CfC's are done on the public-webevents mail list and the comment period is one week. However, in some rare cases, for example when Member confidentially is an issue, the member-webevents mail list is used.

Note the CfC mechanism is not normally used with some of the WG's work, for instance, the Widgets group does not typically use CfCs because they have regularly scheduled meetings.

Mail List Policy, Usage, Etiquette, etc.

The Consortium has formal Mail List policies and procedures yet also accommodates some flexibility on how mail lists are used:

Each W3C mailing list has its own policies regarding who may post to the list. Those subscribed to each list are generally able to post directly to the list without delay; those who are not may be subject to manual moderation (at least the first time they post.)

See W3C Mailing List and Archive Info and W3C Guidelines for Email Attachment Formats for more information.

Web Events' members appreciate and encourage frank technical discussions on our mail lists but all discussions must be done in a respectful manner. Please note this respect requirement is codified in the Process Document via the following participation criteria "Social competence in one's role". Additionally, see Positive Work Environment Task Force (Member-only).

We expect participant using our mail lists to adhere to the following:

  • Messages should be encoded using plain text
  • Messages should not use top-posting
  • Attachments must follow the W3C Guidelines for Email Attachment Formats, in particular:
    • Avoid unnecessary email attachments.
    • Use an attachment only when it is likely to benefit to recipients. Otherwise, place the information (in plain text format) in the body of your message.
    • If an attachment is necessary, avoid formats that are virus prone, proprietary or platform dependent. For example, whenever possible you should use HTML instead of MS Word, PowerPoint or PDF. (Ideally, use XHTML or HTML4.)
    • Follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

IRC

Web Events uses the following channel of the W3C's IRC system (irc.w3.org; port 6667):

  • #webevents - for Public technical discussions

An HTML interface to the W3C's IRC system is available at http://cgi.w3.org/member-bin/irc/irc.cgi. See Meeting Resources for more information about the W3C's IRC system.

Testing

The WG's charter mandates the WG create a comprehensive test suite for all features of a specification is necessary to ensure the specification's robustness, consistency, and implementability, and to promote interoperability between User Agents.

Each specification has its own test suite and most specs include the test suite in the spec's directory.

Testing Resources:

Mercurial

The WG uses Mercurial for its specs and test suite (the later does not yet exist).

Some Mercurial links:

Links to Group Resources