Re: Transition to a revised Technical Report Development Process [W3Process-ISSUE-39, W3Process-ACTION-10, proposal]

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 12:26:29 +1100, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> On Oct 26, 2013, at 1:35 , Charles McCathie Nevile  
> <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>> On Sat, 19 Oct 2013 00:51:00 +0200, David Singer <singer@apple.com>
>>> On Oct 14, 2013, at 20:57 , Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 10/14/2013 11:27 PM, Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH) wrote:
>>>>> I'm proposing the next recharter or charter extension as the forcing  
>>>>> function to move to the new process. That might be too draconian for  
>>>>> some groups or specs, but the Director/team can use discretion in  
>>>>> such cases.
>>>>>
>>>>>> It becomes too confusing to start all over again.
>>>>> I'm still not understanding this point.  The new process eliminates  
>>>>> steps, it doesn't force anyone to "start all over again".
>>>>> What's the scenario you're concerned about?
>>>>
>>>> I'm sympathetic to the worry.  I've spent a great deal of time with  
>>>> Tracking Protection of late.  I can imagine great frustration if they  
>>>> were driving all of their effort towards LC, and all of a sudden they  
>>>> were told that there is no LC; instead they need to drive to LCCR and  
>>>> demonstrate wide review - something that they had never planned on  
>>>> doing before getting to LC.
>>>
>>> I agree, this could be ugly.
>>>
>>> "we have a document, please give us public comment"
>>> "OK, we have addressed the public and other comments, now implement  
>>> and tell us what we missed"
>>>
>>> do seem to be pretty separate steps.  how does the new process  
>>> envisage them?
>>
>> As the responsibility of the Working Group to determine how to handle.
>
> That's fine.  Just give people a name they can use (a consistent name)  
> if they wish.

How about "getting ready for LCCR"?

There are currently groups that have a "pre-last-call call for review".  
This is OK as a practice, but I don't think putting the name pre-last-call  
in the process would be an improvement in any way...

>> It seems that in most successful cases there is in fact implementation  
>> going on at a very early stage, often before the public has even had a
>> chance to comment.
>
> It's not pretty to tell the public "oh, thanks for your feedback, but  
> there are too many implementations to change now"…  :-(

No. It is often inconsistent with the goals of the W3C process, and in
most cases unlikely to satisfy the director as having formally addressed
(as required) the wide review necessary to be approved as an LCCR.

But this is not a new problem. Groups have been trying that at least since
I first filed a comment on a spec 15-odd years ago, and have subsequently
been prepared to revise their work based on clear arguments. At the same  
time, implementation and deployment actually does matter in the real  
world, so without automatically declaring that requiring changes to  
implementations is bad, it makes sense to take into account the status of  
deployment. Indeed, under the proposal groups SHOULD document known  
implementation, for that reason inter alia.

cheers

chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
         chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 5 November 2013 07:28:37 UTC