Re: [chairs] This Old House (OASIS) - Further Response to Peter Brown

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

Oh, I think this is more like saying don't trust a house builder whose 
toolbox is not neatly organized.  Maybe, maybe not.  I think it is 
something that would need to be demonstrated, not assumed. 

I can imagine that creative chaos, in prescribed bounds, can be quite 
useful. The question is where do you draw a box around it and say,  "This 
is an OASIS deliverable and we all need to be doing this the same way", 
versus, "This is a TC working style detail"?  I think the OASIS promise is 
in transparency and openness, that the messy day-to-day work is visible, 
not that it is always pretty.

In any case, it is a trade-off, between the benefits of order and the 
administrative cost to monitor and enforce the order, or the technology 
costs to acquire and support tools that enforce the order for us.

-Rob

Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net> wrote on 04/28/2010 04:49:06 PM:

> 
> Peter Brown asked about other areas that need improvement at OASIS. 
> 
> I would observe that a standards organization should follow some 
> standard practice in how information about its work is stored. It 
> does not reflect well on OASIS or the work of its TCs if every TC 
> has its own methods for recording information about its work. Such 
> as minutes for example. Minutes should have a uniform format. 
> 
> Moreover, information about the work of a TC should have a uniform 
> location. Documents should be versioned in some uniform fashion. 
> 
> OASIS resembles a "This Old House" where rooms (TCs) have been added
> on to the main house in a haphazard fashion and each one is 
> different that most of the others. 
> 
> That does not inspire a lot of confidence in the architect or in the 
rooms. 
> 
> The argument will be made that TCs need the freedom to organize 
> their work any way they want. 
> 
> *BS* 
> 
> TCs need the freedom to develop the intellectual content to their 
> work. That is not the same thing as being creative with *where* 
> information about their work is stored. Or the keeping of records, 
> versions, etc. 
> 
> We do want people to find the information and have confidence in our
> work. Yes? 
> 
> To do that, we need to decide to remodel our "This Old House" in 
> such a way that documents for every TC are in the same locations 
> (relative to the TC homepage), has the same version numbering, has 
> the same structure for minutes, etc.. 
> 
> Now is the time since discussions are underway about a new technical
> infrastructure to support TC work. 
> 
> Personally I would like to see that infrastructure support and 
> require a work flow and structure that provides uniform access to 
> the work of TCs. Save our creativity for the substance of our technical 
work. 
> 
> It will take time to transition to a new way of documenting our work
> but having worked in several TCs, I have confident in the 
> contributing members of our TCs that they are equal to the task. 
> 
> Hope everyone is having a great day! 
> 
> Patrick 
> 
> PS: I will complain even if my ideas about organizing TC work are 
> accepted the first time the process goddess makes me change the way 
> I am doing something.  But, the purpose of standards is to 
> facilitate access, not make to me (or others) happy. 
> -- 
> Patrick Durusau
> patrick@durusau.net
> Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
> Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
> Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
> Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)