W3C's 'Moral Majesty'

[Don Park]

1. F2F and weekly telephone conferences

Without a doubt, both forms of meetings are valuable.  Faces and voices
encourage people to work closer and reduces extremism through bonding and
group behaviors.  However, these meetings are not efficient enough to
justify the cost of participation to individual members.  If the WG member
is an employee of a large company, then the cost is less and even enjoyable
to certain extent.  If the WG member is an independent developer/consultant,
the cost is high enough to prevent participation unless the member also
happens to be the Chair.

I have been to only one WG F2F meeting and I found it painfully boring,
tiring, and also disgusting to certain extent.  Creativity is discouraged,
progress is measured in number of easy decisions and issues raised,
difficult decisions are deferred without exception, myriad issues are chewed
enthusiastically only to be spitted out and left on the floor like cheap
gum, political complications are raised and usually dealt with sarcastic
jokes which leaves the conflict hidden and dangerous, dinner conversations
are laced with petty thoughts, bureacratic whining, and blatant discussion
of personal gains.  Discussion of F2F meeting location is not based on
reason but pleasure without regard to cost.  A meeting at South of France is
great if your company is paying for it but not if it is coming out of your
pocket.

Telephone meetings are more efficient than F2F except there is no room for
indepth discussions.  It is a breeding ground for hasty decisions without
proper representation of the issues.

2. Mailing lists

Both WG and IG mailing lists are great but unsearchable and private.
Confidentially is too broad and laced with political issues which ends up
reducing representation of the outsiders.  Issues are raised, dropped by
inattention, and killed by time.  Field of vision in mailing list
discussions is one dimensional (even with hyperlinks) which restricts
awareness and thus limits the level of complexity the WG can deal with.

All this is encouraged indirectly by W3C and its policies.

If W3C can change itself, it should first relax its policy to reflect public
opinions more formally rather than at mercy of WG members' kindness.  It
should also install policy of independence from W3C bureacracy.  The
director should be stripped of his unspoken right to interfere with his
unfairly heavy hand.  Second, W3C should start using and investing in
groupware tools that allows efficient and focused online meetings,
bookkeeping of issues and decisions so that status, factors, and
justificaitons can be seen at a glance.  We must change W3C to fit the
changing needs.  W3C must allow us to change it because it can not change
itself.  Most of all, W3C must stop being arrogant bureacratic fools with
grandeur self image of being THE innovative leader with THE right vision.

To me, W3C is Tim Berners-Lee.  Tim, you must stop thinking that you have a
monopoly on the future vision.  Instead of pushing your vision, try building
a place where visions of others from far abroad can come together and
interact so that the right vision can be born out of them.  Be a mother, not
a father.

Best,

Don Park    -   mailto:donpark at docuverse.com
Docuverse   -   http://www.docuverse.com


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