[wg-c-2] Preliminaries

["Kevin J. Connolly" <CONNOLLK@rspab.com>]

This is a retransmission at the request of the Listadmin . . .

This message is largely on the same subject and generally parallel in content to a post I am making on the wg-c-1 list.  If you've read it there, please skip to the penultimate paragraph of this post.

Dear readers:

Someone has to break the ice, so it might as well be I.  I have some little experience in the preparation of documents by committee, both online and face-to-face, and I will share some thoughts on the process.

First suggestion:  Since we are charged with answering several questions which have been framed for us, I suggest that we establish threads which are devoted to each of those questions.  This is not to say that posts on other threads are forbidden, but rather to suggest that the actual drafting work of the group be conducted in these specific threads.  Let's agree that we'll try really hard to keep posts in the "Work: xx" threads on topic, okay? :-)

Second suggestion:  I have found it useful in the past to adopt the "reporter" model for moving discussion toward consensus and reducing that consensus to a written form.  This is the model that is used by the American Law Institute to produce the Restatements of [American] Law.  It is used by the Board of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York to produce the Pattern Jury Instructions.  It was used by the CORE ad hoc committee to produce CORE's RFP for the development and maintenance of its shared registration system.  It was used by the Policy Advisory Body to develop its response to the Green Paper.  It's not perfect, but it can work.

Under this model, once we have parsed our work into manageable pieces (see below), one person is selected (drafted/shanghaied/volunteered) to act as the Reporter.  The Reporter's job is to weave the differing arguments/positions/statements of the WG members into a document.  The document covers both areas of consensus and areas of disagreement.  It is posted (either to the list or to a website) for comments.  As comments are received, if consensus develops, that outcome is worked into the document.   As new disagreements develop, they, too, are reflected in the document.

Eventually, it may become necessary for us to decide on a means for finding "rough consensus" 
even in the presence of disagreement.  Whether this takes the form of a votebot or the submission of a minority report on one or more issues need not be decided now.  Once our discussions begin in earnest, it will quickly become evident whether or not we're going to find that kind of consensus.

The work of this group is sufficiently technical that I do not have an easy "hook" for our work to begin with.  I will be spending some time over the next few days thinking about ways in which we can avoid going off in fifteen directions simultaneously.  My initial thoughts are that a good design should proceed in a top-down manner, and proceed from the general to the particular.  Decisions about how often to republish the zone files will need to be made, but they should not distract us from the broader concerns that should direct our design process.  I suggest that our initial posts should be directed to identifying the decisions that need to be made, rather than trying to develop the decisions themselves.

Thanks for reading; as usual, please disregard that silly confidentiality trailer, which is an artifact of this mail client and my IT department's generally 404 character.

Kevin J. Connolly

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