Subject:
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Re: LDraw.org Standards Committee (LSC) Draft Proposal
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Thu, 24 Apr 2003 01:05:10 GMT
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In lugnet.cad.dev, Dan Boger writes:
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 08:25:01PM +0000, Dan Boger wrote:
> > Here's my revision to the draft. I think it makes it simpler, while retaining
> > the key details. If anyone's interested, I can try to post a marked up
> > version, with the changes underlined.
>
> here's a (manually) marked up version:
>
> http://peeron.com/tmp/lsc06a.html
Thank you for providing the marked up version. It makes abundantly clear
what the differences are, which is a good thing. How did you generate it? (I
know your aversion to MS and suspect you didn't use MS Word for the
generation :) )
Hopefully some automatic way so we can be sure all the differences are
highlighted.
In your preface, you say "Since this is really the first step twards an
official LDraw.org body, I think it's very important to have the whole
community design it."...
There are two misconceptions there, I think, and they're critical, and a
serious process problem as well.
First, this is not the first step toward an official ldraw.org body. That
step was taken some time ago, (as outlined here:
http://news.lugnet.com/cad/dev/org/ldraw/?n=1183) and activity continues,
although not at the pace some would like. Community input got us to the
point Steve outlined in 1183 and community input has been important since then.
Second, it's not a step towards an (overall) official LDraw.org body at all.
It's a realisation of a standards committee *within the framework of the
existing temporary official LDraw.org body*. That standards committee is
not, repeat NOT the entire LDraw.org body.
Clearing up those misconceptions about where we are at this point and what
this proposal is about is, I feel, important as it has bearing on the way
your proposal is structured.
Also the notion that the entire community can successfully design an
organisation, which you allude to, has not proved itself to be realistic in
practice, at least not with this community, not in my view. Successful
organization efforts have not used the committee of the whole approach.
I think I have two major concerns that I have with your draft itself that
are not present in the one that we developed, and they are as follows. I
shall be brief because others have touched on them already.
First the process by which the LSC is chosen seems very ill defined. It
makes a lot of reference to the community carrying out things but since you
have cut away any reference to the current Steering Committee, there is no
way to ensure the process will function successfully, other than via a great
number of posts here, or worse, secret emails.
The LSC is properly a creation that is chartered from LDraw.org and to cut
it away from the existing structure is bad on the face of it, and further,
it does not have the benefit of driving additional structure into LDraw.org
by forcing it to set up voting and discussion mechanisms.
This is a serious concern. Having the LSC float in space with no anchor is
not good for the community in my view.
But the second concern is, if anything, more serious.
The 0.6 draft proposes that the LSC solicit input, document work, and draft
standards that it has the power to approve. This is a very common way for
standards to be created. It allows for the LSC to structure the work so that
standards can be approved in pieces but still remain logicially coherent.
Votes on standards (or parts of standards) would be frequent as there is a
lot to decide. But the standards would be technically sound and would be
flexible as there would be a well defined and efficient mechanism to develop
them
You have changed the LSC from a group that proposes and determines
standards, with a great deal of community input, to a group that merely
proposes standards. At that point a community vote has to be held to
determine them. A simple up and down vote is all that would be practical, as
votes cannot be held very often if you have a huge (self selected) voting
body to consult with. Further, by allowing standards to be voted on by all
comers, you remove an important sanity check on them. Perfectly good
standards may get voted down by people that don't understand why they are
important. The proposal as written removes this serious risk by ensuring
that the people that vote on them are technically competent.
You had said that you were concerned that programmers might be
underrepresented on the LSC. I don't think that's nearly as serious a
concern with the LSC as it is with the entire community as a whole which
would be voting on standards. Programmers would be severely underrepresented
there which, since in your proposal is where final say is had, is far worse
than any alleged underrepresentation on the LSC.
I think both of these serious concerns need to be addressed, I cannot
support your proposal as written.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LDraw.org Standards Committee (LSC) Draft Proposal
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| (...) it was semi-automatic - I used vimdiff to find all the differences, and marked them up manually. Didn't take long. But since it is manual, it's theoretically possible that I missed some - I promise, nothing was left out intentionally. (...) (...) (21 years ago, 24-Apr-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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