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Subject: BSI approach to comments/dispositions was: Re: [tab] Re: [chairs] Chairs: Requesting your feedback on comment resolution logs

Peter,
Disappointed that you fail to inform the chairs and others what you found at BSI. Who have a browser based interface for the entry of comments. Which means tracking them is part of the draft. Which means editors could enter their changes as the last comment. Perhaps you would like to post a separate note on your findings. 

On 05/07/2012 08:29 PM, Peter F Brown wrote:

Patrick,
To be clear, I am not supporting a "any which way but meaningfully public" approach, as you suggest. That's an unfair characterization of what I argue for.
Well, let's look at what you suggest below before we pass judgment on that question. 


I am suggesting three things:
1) TCs should be free to determine how to capture and dispose issues, consistent with the TC process - it's about people, the volunteers on the TCs, not machines;

OK, so no standard way for all TCs.
If every library had a different system for shelving books, some by size, some by color, some by author's first name, how would you, as a member of the public, ever find a book from library to library?
That is what having a non-standard means of capturing/disposing of issues means. 

How is that "public" in any meaningful sense of the word?


2) TCs should be free to pick from a range of tools and agreed templates/procedures - it is a false assumption that every active TC member should be "computer (programming) literate" and it's a trend I would discourage;
and - which I haven't raised before but will now, given the opportunity -
By computer literate I meant being able to use a word processor or web browser.
If they aren't that computer literate, we may have to disagree, they have no place being an OASIS editor. 

But that's a distraction, to speak of unfair distractions.


3) TC Administration should harmonise the way that the issues; comments thereon; and disposition thereof; are *presented* to members and the public on the web site. On this I agree, it is a mess.


You and I both know that is unworkable so why bother to suggest it?
Besides, as the BSI has demonstrated, it is possible to have a browser based system that accepts comments tied to the drafts in question and that can be tracked by editors and others. 

One system that places no undue burden on anyone and it works.

What do you see as the difficulty with that approach?


But please take a look at the (lack of) guidance concerning the folders to create on Kavi as an example of how we over-regulate in some areas (filenaming conventions, for example - and which we all still manage to get wrong) and under-regulate in others.
It isn't a question of over-regulation, at least for file names. Other standards organizations have fairly complex file naming conventions that they manage to get right. The W3C for example. Or complex work flows, the IETF for example. Both of which are volunteer organizations or at least as much as OASIS. 

So, to return to your original question:
What you are advocating is if the TC Admin can clean up after members who don't want to be bothered with standards, then and only then can we have meaningful public access to comments and their dispositions. 

As I said,

"any which way but meaningfully public"


Hope you are having a great week!

Patrick




Cheers,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Durusau [mailto:patrick@durusau.net]
Sent: Sunday, 06 May, 2012 03:52
To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: tab@lists.oasis-open.org; Jamie Clark; Peter F Brown; Scott McGrath
Subject: Re: [tab] Re: [chairs] Chairs: Requesting your feedback on comment resolution logs

Jon,

On 05/05/2012 11:23 AM, Jon Bosak wrote:

Thanks, Jamie.

I've been reliably informed that OASIS gave up on the form I referred
to earlier and now just accepts comments through the list; that gives
me a better context.

But now I'm having trouble understanding why we need to acknowledge
all comments sent to a publicly visible, archived list.  They're in
the list, right?

And people who care to see what eventually happened have the publicly
visible, archived record mandated by the process, right?


Well, but to use a non-OASIS example, being "open and public" may mean:

1) List visitors to the White House who had more than photo op appearances with the President on a separate list, or

2) List some subset of those visitors in the list of all the visitors, including thousands of boy/girl scouts, school children and sundry.

One of those I would term as meaningfully "open and public" and the other is not.


Here is a "pick three" test for whether OASIS TCs are in fact "open and
public:"

1) Pick any three current TCs (of which you are not a member)

2) Locate comments from non-TC members and select a comment

3) Locate the resolution of that comment by the TC


The problem with the "any which way but meaningfully public" approach
that Peter suggests means that even as an OASIS member for many years, I
have no idea how TCs of which I am not a member track comments or their
resolutions. I could spend hours trying to track down TC minutes (maybe
there, maybe not), maybe tracked by JIRA number, maybe not.

In some absolute sense, if someone is willing to put in varying amounts
of effort, the process is open, but not meaningfully so.

Let me put this another way:

What disadvantage do TCs suffer if comments are easy to track, along
with whatever resolution is made? (accept, reject, modify, etc.)


I hope no one is suggesting that a TC must act on any comment received
beyond what's already specified in our (extremely open) process or
worse, that it is under some kind of obligation to engage in discussion
with the genral public; that would not only be insupportable, it would
be quite unheard of in standards work conducted by experts, which is
what we're supposed to be doing here.

You must have missed the BSI link I posted earlier in the thread.

http://drafts.bsigroup.com/

You do have to create an account to login but BSI doesn't appear to
discriminate based on your location or nationality.

So, public input isn't "unheard of in standards work" and no one has
suggested a dialogue, merely a *usefully* public record of comments and
their resolution.

As far as OASIS being "extremely open," I am sure that was true at its
inception and by comparison to then existing standards bodies.

But email archives with comments that have no connection to TC
resolutions so tracking any comment/resolution chain is like the White
House visitor's list, it's public, but not in any meaningful sense of
the word.


A diplomatic regard for the
tender feelings of some very significant stakeholder will naturally
incline a chair with any sense to respond somehow (perhaps off the
comment list), but trying to mandate this kind of thing is at best
counterproductive.

I trust as usual that someone will set me right if I am further
misunderstanding the tenor of this discussion.


The value of "open" and "public" when OASIS was created were novel for
its time. But the world has changed since then and unfortunately, OASIS
has not changed with it. It persists in looking backwards for its values
of "open" and "public."

Any eGov initiative will tell you than piling up email in a mound and
then in some other mound having discussions of some of those emails that
are then reflected without notice into a draft, may have qualified as
"open" once upon a time, but not today.

If OASIS were to offer its members current technology for standards
work, I suspect that TCs would vote with their feet and not require
mandates to use better methodologies.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Patrick


Jon



Jamie Clark wrote:

+1 to Jon.
We have a public review mechanism, and Feedback License, for  comments
coming from outside the TC's membership.
We have TC members, who can contribute what they like subject to our
IPR Policy, and can even bring in material from others, by vouching
for its availability and contribution under that same policy.
That's it.  Nothing else comes in. Or at least, that's what our rules
say.
I don't think there was a proposal to change that?
Cordially, JBC

James Bryce Clark, General Counsel
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org/who/staff.php#clark

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Jon Bosak<bosak@pinax.com>  wrote:

Hello Folks,

Sorry to be late in catching up with this thread.

I agree that TCs should be able to use whatever tool suits them and
still complies with the language already in place.  Spreadsheets are
handy, and a couple of samples (like the ones already posted) will be
helpful to chairs unfamiliar with the idea.

But the bit about public comments puzzles me.  Are we no longer
maintaining IPR control over contributions made by people who are not
members of OASIS?  My TC has been operating under the instruction
given us lo, these many years ago that we cannot recognize comments
that don't go through the official comment form.  Is that form now
going to feed some comment management mechanism, or are we going to
accept comments from anywhere, or what?

If we've stopped being concerned about the IPR status of contributions,
my group would sure like to know about that.

Jon



Chet Ensign wrote:

TC Chairs,

Recently, I have had several discussions with people on comment
resolution logs. As I'm sure you know from the TC Process, TCs are
required to maintain logs of comments received and their resolution
and provide them at several different points throughout the process.
Specifically, in section 3.2 Public Review of a Committee Draft
(http://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process#publicReview),

the process reads:

"The TC must acknowledge the receipt of each comment, track the
comments received, and post to its primary e-mail list its disposition
of each comment at the end of the review period."

Our growing liaisons with other standards bodies is making getting
this right even more important.

I believe it is becoming more and more important that we accomplish
both the letter and the spirit of this requirement in order to make it
easier for commenters to learn of the disposition of their feedback,
for reviewers to learn what has happened between one public review
and the next, and for voters to get a full picture of the history of a
Committee Specification when it is advanced as a Candidate OASIS
Standard.

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on how best to accomplish
this, how best to provide you with the flexibility you need while
ensuring that the record of comments and resolutions is maintained
and made available over time. For example,

- Some TCs are using JIRA successfully to track, manage and report
on comments. Would training in using JIRA for this process be useful?

- Some TCs are using spread sheets to track and report on feedback.
Would template spread sheets help you adopt this approach?

- Would a document on best practices help you and your TC put a
mechanism in place to successfully track and report on comments.

Please take a minute to share your thoughts with me on how we can
make this work conveniently and securely. I want to gather the
fruits of
your experience and thoughts, as well as the feedback from your TC,
before making any proposals for next steps. I look forward to
hearing from you and meanwhile, thank you for all the work that you
do here at OASIS.

Best regards,

/chet
----------------
Chet Ensign
Director of Standards Development and TC Administration
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org

Primary: +1 973-996-2298
Mobile: +1 201-341-1393

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--
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)
OASIS Technical Advisory Board (TAB) - member

Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau

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