RE: [dita-adoption] Summary of new OASIS process

[Troy Klukewich <troy.klukewich@oracle.com>]

Re:

<quote>
I do think that having internal-to-TC review is a good thing,
but posting to dita.xml.org is NOT internal to the TC and is
precisely the wrong thing to do.  Posting to dita.xml.org is
making something public, and that's what we don't want to
do with something the TC hasn't even discussed yet.
</quote>

I was thinking that the TC would of course review and approve an article internally prior to posting anywhere per usual.

<quote>
When you say "we" above, who's that?  Certainly not the TC, since
it makes no sense to talk about the TC posting things outside the 
auspices of the TC.
</quote>

I'm reading that for some posting to be "official," we need to go through the protracted approval cycle per policy, as Mary outlines. I suspect this policy will curtail our article production, which is faster and more frequent than standards documents. 

I think the policy is fine for documents that may take years to post. For articles that take a few weeks, the policy is going to slow us down, perhaps to the point of people not wanting to contribute articles in the first place.

So, if we use our usual internal review process and can't post officially, I propose we find an alternative way of posting adoption information unofficially. Or, we admit that the charter of the Adoption TC for producing helpful articles is not compatible with the charter of OASIS for defining standards and seek an alternative membership structure outside of OASIS so we can continue our work in the field.

The main goal should be to generate Adoption content as fluidly and as simply as possible. I'm not sure this is possible given OASIS's primary mandate for generating specs. We need a more agile process for articles.

I'm willing to explore all the options.

Troy


-----Original Message-----
From: Grosso, Paul [mailto:pgrosso@ptc.com] 
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 9:55 AM
To: DITA Adoption TC
Subject: RE: [dita-adoption] Summary of new OASIS process



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Troy Klukewich [mailto:troy.klukewich@oracle.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 2010 November 11 8:06
> To: Kristen Eberlein; DITA Adoption TC
> Subject: RE: [dita-adoption] Summary of new OASIS process
> 
> I think we're going to have to carefully evaluate who are audience is
> and where they hang out. The process following seems well designed for
> official documents relating to and speaking to OASIS members, or for
> wider public distribution of documents officially representing the
> OASIS standards charter.
> 
> In terms of informal adoption documents, helping people get up to
> speed, as opposed to defining standards, I wonder if a public venue
> like dita.xml.org would be better, where anyone can join and
contribute
> without a protracted review phase. I am very concerned that a
> protracted, complicated review phase with multiple votes and sign-offs
> is likely to curtail enthusiasm for writing helpful articles on a
> regular basis that are difficult enough to garner given our limited
> time and day jobs.
> 
> We could have a quicker, internal review as a "workgroup" within the
> Adoption TC, posting to dita.org. These would not be official
standards
> documents representing the TC. Individual authorship could be noted.

I do think that having internal-to-TC review is a good thing,
but posting to dita.xml.org is NOT internal to the TC and is
precisely the wrong thing to do.  Posting to dita.xml.org is
making something public, and that's what we don't want to
do with something the TC hasn't even discussed yet.

> 
> We might have a triage for those documents that are official, which
> follow the TC process outlined following, and those that are not
> official, which are posted outside the auspices of the TC.

When you say "we" above, who's that?  Certainly not the TC, since
it makes no sense to talk about the TC posting things outside the 
auspices of the TC.

paul

> 
> The downside I can see for unofficial documents is that they lose the
> "branding" of the Adoption TC, which I think is unfortunate, given
that
> disseminating adoption information is the primary purpose of the TC
(as
> opposed to coming up with standards). I do not know how to rectify
> branding, but perhaps this problem is better than curtailing article
> production.
> 
> Troy

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