Beta-testing the New Community and Business Group Site

Note: This was the post originally at https://cgbeta.w3.org/community/forum/2014/07/31/beta-welcome/ for our July 2014 announcement. We do not anticipate maintaining the beta server and so we have copied the original post here for archival purposes.

Welcome to the beta test of the new Community and Business Group site. The address of the beta site is http://cgbeta.w3.org/community/.

The data on this site is for experimental purposes only. We invite you to propose and join groups and test various parts of the system; see the list of primary tests below. Carrying out the tests we describe below will have no affect on W3C’s production Community Group site. Email notifications are sent to the Team (and not Advisory Committee Representatives). Please note, however, that if you make changes to your W3C account (which is not directly part of the beta), those changes will have an affect on production systems.

We welcome your feedback on the beta, bug reports, and suggestion on public-council@w3.org (archive).

We welcome beta comments through 31 October 2014. We would expect to launch the revised site in November then proceed to next steps for Community and Business Groups.

What’s new

The changes in the beta reflect several years experience with user interactions with the site, as well as moving toward a more contemporary design and implementation.

• New, responsive design.
• Clearer user interface for joining groups.
• New documentation for the program, better integrated in context.
• Improved performance for lists of groups and reports.
• Group descriptions can include markup.
• New sort-by-name feature on participants page for each group.
• When a group is proposed, the link that we send to the community is to the (persistent) announcement, rather than to a temporary anchor on the proposed groups page.

Primary tests

Propose a group

• Who may do this during the beta: Anyone with a W3C account.
• Do this from the home page (for recently created groups) or any of the current groups page (or proposed or past).

Support a group

• Who may do this: Anyone with a W3C account.
• Do this from the home page (for recently proposed groups) or the list of proposed groups.

Join a group

• Who may do this during the beta: Anyone with a W3C account.
• Do this from the home page (for recently created groups) or any of the current groups.

Nominate a chair

• Who may do this during the beta: Group participants and Team.
• Do this on the group’s participant page.
• See how to nominate a chair.

Publish an initial draft of a report

• Who may do this during the beta: Group Chairs (who are logged in).
• You need a URI and a title. You can make up the URI, for example http://www.example.org/1234 or something else. Please create a new URI for each test.
• Links to the UI for publishing are found on each group’s home page.

Publish a final report

• Who may do this during the beta: Group Chairs (who are logged in).
• You need a previously published draft, a URI, and a title. You can make up the URI, for example http://www.example.org/1234-final or something else. Please create a new URI for each test.
• Do this from the group’s home page.

Make a Final Specification Commitment

• Who may do this during the beta: Group participants.
• This is only possible after the Chair has published a final report.
• Links to do this are on the group’s home page and in the blog post announcing the final report.

Write a blog post in the W3C Forum

• Who may do this during the beta: Anyone with a W3C account.
• Note: There is no significant difference between the production W3C Forum and the beta W3C Forum.

Leave a group

• Who may do this during the beta: Group participants.
• Do this from the group home page.

Detailed notes on the beta

• When you join a group, to simplify our beta setup, we are not automatically propagating to our database the usual permissions we give group participants to edit in their group blog. Blog editing will be no different from the current production site, so we did not think it important to test in beta.
• Rather than require usual AC Reps to approve requests to join a group, in the beta the team will play the AC Rep role for all Members.
• We are not creating mailing lists or wikis for newly created beta groups.
• Mails triggered by user interactions that usually go to team-community-process or public-council or w3c-archive will be sent instead to individuals on the Team. Also, we will not send email to AC Representatives.

FAQ

I just joined the group but am not in the list of participants.

When you join a group, there is an approximately 2-minute delay before the information about your joining is available to all parts of the system.

I just joined the group and cannot leave.

When you join a group, there is an approximately 2-minute delay before the information about your joining is available to all parts of the system.

Where are the Community Groups I am used to seeing?

The list of groups in the beta is not the same as the real list of Community and Business Groups. If you find a group that looks real in the beta, it is because we have copied the data from the live site to be able to evaluate the beta site under “real world” conditions.

Does this beta involve any legal commitments (e.g,. by joining groups)?

No.

What’s next for Community and Business Groups after the beta?

We anticipate a number of other improvements to CGs and BGs such as “copyright-only” groups and a simplified join process for non-Members. We do not yet have a schedule for their completion. We invite people to join the Community Council for discussions about Community and Business Groups.