FW: [dita-fa-edboard] Posting DITA specs to the wiki

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

Posted on behalf of Mary McRae:

Michael,

While we don't believe it's fair to characterize OASIS as "choosing to ignore"
anything related to DITA, we do understand your disappointment, respect your
feedback, and applaud your desire to mobilize support for change. 

To pursue one or both of the courses of action you suggest below, you may want
to consider:

- discussing your ideas with other OASIS members via the
oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org [1].

- communicating with the OASIS Board of Directors via
oasis-board-comment@lists.oasis-open.org (a list which is also a publicly
archived. If you would like to communicate privately with the Board, their
individual email addresses are posted at
http://www.oasis-open.org/who/bod.php.)

Changing the way OASIS handles public comments will likely involve several
Board Committees including the TC Process Committee (chaired by Jeff
Mischkinsky of Oracle), the IPR Committee (chaired by Ed Cobb of BEA) and the
IT Infrastructure Committee (chaired by Claus von Riegen of SAP).

Also, please note that there was an editorial snafu, in my original post. The
first sentence in the paragraph below was intended to be replaced by the second
sentence. Instead it was left in the copy. Michael, you are correct that XML
authoring isn't required, however creating a usable set of "pages" from one
large word-processing file poses a significant challenge. The reality is that
we can't even get valid XHTML from Word or OpenOffice, let alone
clean markup.

> To take advantage of Wiki comments, OASIS specifications would have to be
> authored in XML and the vast majority are not. While the DITA standard,
> along
> with a handful of others, are authored using structured markup, most are
> not.
> The resulting HTML does not readily lend itself to the decomposition and
> hypertext linking necessary to take advantage of a
> wiki-based commenting system.

Best regards,
Mary
 

[1] The list "oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org" is a publicly archived
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it; to subscribe, join the group at: 
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-member-discuss/

 

 

 

From: Michael Priestley [mailto:mpriestl@ca.ibm.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 10:53 AM
To: Carol Geyer
Cc: 'DITA Editorial Board'
Subject: Re: [dita-fa-edboard] Posting DITA specs to the wiki

 


This is a total disappointment. 

Let me attempt to summarize the points below: 

- this would require a change to the TC process: 
        yes, otherwise we'd just do it without asking. 

- no one else is doing it: 
        no one else was doing focus areas either. OASIS opened the door by
providing a Wiki for DITA. The fact that the Wiki cannot, by OASIS policy,
contain a commentable version of the subject of the Wiki is ridiculous. 

- tracking comments: 
        we already require signon to make comments in the wiki. Is the bar
really that much lower than the "comments" form on the TC website? 

- spec would need to be authored in XML: 
        actually, it would need to be publishable to a Wiki. DITA happens to be
in the privileged position of being used by documentation professionals who
have already encountered that requirement and solved it. But I'm sure
equivalent routes could be found for Word source or HTML if another standard
wanted to follow suit. 
        
The final and overriding point here is that they think we're the only ones who
would benefit. Fine. It took them two years to notice that we're in their pilot
program for Wikis, and pilot programs create new requirements. Which they are
choosing to ignore. 

I see two courses of action: 

- get other TCs to join us in a petition; as maintainers of the specs, they
should care about the way they engage with the public, and the comment forms
are useless 
- get a formal petition out to OASIS membership, regardless of TC affiliation;
as the people who pay for OASIS to continue, they should care about all the TCs
accountability to public input beyond the scope of the TC. 

If we need to drag OASIS kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century,
I'm happy to contribute the first kicks and screams. 

Michael Priestley
Lead IBM DITA Architect 
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25 



"Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org> 

01/14/2008 09:56 AM 

To

"'DITA Editorial Board'" <dita-fa-edboard@lists.xml.org> 

cc

	
Subject

[dita-fa-edboard] Posting DITA specs to the wiki

 

		




**Forwarding on behalf of Mary McRae**

DITA XML.org Editorial Board,
OASIS staff have been working hard to evaluate the Editorial Board's request to
make the DITA specifications available for public comment on XML.org. While we
are all excited by the opportunity to provide a more dynamic mechanism for
receiving public comments, the project poses several significant challenges
that we feel may be insurmountable at this time.

The OASIS TC Process document (which is intimately connected to our
Intellectual Property Rights Policy) is very specific about the collection and
handling of public comments. TCs are required to transparently acknowledge,
track, audit, and record the disposal of all public comments--and their
mechanism for doing so is expressly defined as a mailing list. Most other
standards bodies process public comments in much the way OASIS does--and for
much the same reasons. Encouraging public comments through a wiki would require
changing our TC Process, and that can only be done by the OASIS Board of
Directors.

We would recommend the Board consider a change if the Wiki comment mechanism
did not require much implementation resources or if it could be used for most
OASIS specifications. Unfortunately, neither condition is true.

Simply installing a hyperlinked version of the DITA specifications in a Wiki
would not address the requirements we have for access (user identification)
control and proper comment auditing, leaving DITA open to the risk of
unauthorized contributions and subsequent licensing claims against
implementers. The transactional machinery needed to protect DITA from these
risks would require a significant investment in programming time.

To take advantage of Wiki comments, OASIS specifications would have to be
authored in XML and the vast majority are not. While the DITA standard, along
with a handful of others, are authored using structured markup, most are not.
The resulting HTML does not readily lend itself to the decomposition and
hypertext linking necessary to take advantage of a
wiki-based commenting system.

OASIS IT resources are currently prioritized on projects that benefit a broader
range of our membership.

Although we do not believe this a project OASIS can take on at this time, we do
intend to continue to evaluate this issue and hope to revisit it as soon as
resources allow.

Mary McRae
Manager of TC Administration
OASIS


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