On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Christine Perey wrote:
Harry wrote:
I am also distinctly uncomfortable with all this off-list e-mailing.
Discussios pertinent to the group should happen on-list. It is inefficient
and not transparent to have to e-mail all of you once, and then e-mail the
list, every time something has to get done. Therefore, unless I get a reason
not to, I will start just e-mailing the list for all tasks.
My reply:
I do not propose to continue this back channel indefinitely.
The reasons that there is this off-list mailing on the proof reading of the
wiki page which I prepared 12 hours ago are four fold:
1. sometimes it is valuable to formulate sentences, statements, proposals
for action (the agenda for a meeting, for example), in a small group and to
get quick feedback within that "trusted" circle before pushing an ill-formed
or poorly articulated proposal (e.g., a wiki page) to a larger and important
group. This pre-vetting process helps us to have well articulated and clear
statements for people to read and think about, eventually to debate or agree
with.
This can be done on a list. The list is not that huge. This is normal
operating procedure in every W3C group I have been part of.
2. sometimes even in a well-meaning dialog, or a page which one has taken
pains to prepare to the best of their ability, there can be confusing
statements, errors, omissions (such as the IRC information). For example,
dropping the word "not" or assuming that everyone has the same definition
for "minimum requirements." And there are other circumstances in which one
(like myself) does not have sufficient experience with the W3C processes and
procedures. In these cases, I wish to consult with experts (in "private")
and to only push to the list those suggestions (or an agenda) or remarks
which are best for the group's operation within the W3C guidelines.
See above.
3. And, minor point, but I have found that when a person composes in a rush,
without proof reading or having a spell checker run before the e-mail is
sent, there are many new potential points for confusion. Many (or some)
people on this list are not native English speakers and might be unable to
decode hastily composed messages. Of course, those may happen on a back
channel as well.
See abovve.
4. Last but not least, much of this procedural stuff is vitally important to
our goals, however, is "off topic" in the sense that people who have signed
up for this list are interested in the topic of social networking challenges
and the ways to address these in the future, but not necessarily how you
build the car that will get you all the way to your objectives.
The goal of the charter is important to the entire group, especially given
the large disagreements about the number of deliverables. Therefore, after
I am done rehashing the questionnaire, I will no longer respond to back
channel discussions about the charter without asking to cc them to either
the list or [email protected].
You may not be getting feedback from your circle but I have received plenty
of comments which clearly indicate that tolerance for the discussion of
purely organizational issues is tiresome and (to others on the list)
off-topic. Maybe this is because this list was started after a workshop
which included many non-W3C participants, maybe because we are collecting
people from other worlds. You are the experts on the W3C procedures, many do
not seek to become experts and couldn't care less if we are one XG or two or
many. I can understand how, for many, the decision of one Unified or two or
more XGs is not worth their time. They would rather leave the list than to
have their inbox filled with our debates on this topic.
We received *one* comment, which was more concerned about the lack of
speed in getting out the charter. The nice thing about public discussions
on W3C lists is that you can reference previous messages by URI.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-social-web-talk/2009Feb/0042.html
You can also do this by cc'ing [email protected], as I have done in
response to this post.
Note that the previous charter was ready about 6 months ago. The previous
charter was put on hold in order to have the workshop, as agreed at the
W3C TPAC, even though some people wanted to launch 6 months
ago. Given length of current charter, I believe most AC reps and other
people will not read it.
I hope that this somewhat clarifies why I have opened a back channel which
was originally entitled "please proof read this wiki page" and the ensuing
threads began.
By the way, that's another issue which I have (maybe it's my old age):
threads which go right or left from the original topic or have multiple
topics within them and a totally different subject header than the content
in the thread are difficult for me to follow. But that was not your question
and it is off-topic. Just one of the issues with which I struggle.
Good point, feel free to change title but put "[Re: xxx] was YYY". See
title of this response for example.
Christine
[email protected]
mobile (Swiss): +41 79 436 68 69
--
--harry
Harry Halpin
Informatics, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin
