[humanmarkup-comment] Re: HumanMarkup: Paved With Good Intentions

["Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>]

Hi Ranjeeth,

> [...] we did keep building and rebuilding the same exact
> topics of discussion, repeating the same topics, over the
> last few months, and asking the same questions over
> again.  It's a mistake I've noticed during Phase 0, and
> hasn't been fully solved yet.

Len, in particular, was very good at identifying repetition, and pointing
the group towards resolving it, but he seems to have given up to some
extent. I am quite pleased with the way in which the TC have tried to
rectify it, but am dissatisfied with the results. IMO, the problem could be
eased to some extent by simply *publishing* material until the group can
publish no more! Just get some good policy maker to come up with some style
rules for documents, and then you can have two categories of publictions:
unofficial notes made available by individual members of the TC, and
official notes made available by the TC itself. Good candiates for these
documents are the excellent class diagrams.

You can then maintain some kind of registry of these document for people to
go through. IOW, it will be a certral corpus of work for HumanMarkup. One
of the greatest HumanMarkup problems is the lack of pubished material...
get anything out, even if it's rubbish!

> [...] OASIS's structure brings a lot to this effort.

Nope. OASIS' structure could *potentially* bring a lot to the effort. I see
no particular evidence that it is doing so right now.

> Our initial documents potentially address ALL the concerns
> that currently exist...what exactly we are describing, what
> applications are possible, what are the requirements, and how
> does what we are describing interoperate with current
> technologies.

Yes, but, as you go on to say...

> However, the painful truth is that we *haven't* yet successfully
> framed our discussion around these, and *haven't* kept them
> up to date--yet.  We're *are* almost there though.

If the TC devote themselves to nothing else, it should be in acheiving this
goal!

> Rob played a _very_ important role [...]

Yes, he did.

> [...] our discussion should be in the form of proposals, and we
> have to make a conscious effort to move away from random
> thoughts.

All I can say is that you have a difficult job there, and I certainly don't
envy you. It would be alright if there were some structured and some
unstructured discussion on the list, but at the moment, everything seems so
random.

> It may take one try to strike a fire, or a thousand tries to strike
> a fire, but if we are freezing, we aren't gonna stop trying.

Good :-)

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .