discuss: Re: Beginning of outline for policies
Subject:
Re: Fwd: Beginning of outline for policies
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
19 May 2002 08:50:47 -0000
Message-Id: <20020519013304.D409@lafn.org>
On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 04:40:24PM -0500, Joy Y Goodreau wrote:
>
> Many of the comments in the original draft of the policy statement are
> informational, but not really policy.
This was not purported to be a draft of a policy statement. So
obviously it's not really policy since it wasn't intended to be.
> They are more of procedures than policy. Let's make a mistake on the
> side of brevity. We can always expand later.
>
> Some policy statements. These are not agreed upon policies, yet, but I
> am putting them out there as an example of the types of statements we
> are looking for. It would help if some of the staffers could add the
> policies for there areas to the draft.
>
> Document submission policy: New documents submitted to the LDP are
> subject to an editorial review before being published on the site.
> This review is assigned by the Collections Editor to evaluate
> appropriateness and usability of the
Review Coordinator
> document. Documents that are not able to be reviewed within 10 days
> will be
What about one week?
> placed within the LDP collection conditionally until the appropriate
replace " " w/a
> review can be conducted.
>Once reviewed, authors have an unlimited amount of time
> to incorporate review comments and re-submit the document for
> inclusion with the LDP main collection.
It isn't too clear that what you mean is that: even if a doc passes the
review, it isn't added to our collection until the author makes the
changes suggested by the review. If this takes a long time then by the
time we accept it, it may be stale. So we should expect these changes
to be made fast.
One way to handle this would be to put a new doc on the site immediately
if the review indicates that it's of satisfactory quality. Then the
author gets the comments so that say a week or two later the revised
doc (due to the review) is submitted by the author.
If the original submission is not of satisfactory quality, it doesn't
get on our site and is returned to the author for revision. For such a
case, if the doc is long, then the reviewer should submit comments in
installments to make sure that the author is paying heed to them.
When the author gets an email installment of comments, the author
replies and lets the reviewer know which suggestions have been accepted
(just type OK or the like after them) and which are rejected (and the
reason for rejection). This dialog with the author indicates whether or
not the author is fixing the doc.
I've a few more comments on these 3 lines which are repeated below:
> Once reviewed, authors have an unlimited amount of time
> to incorporate review comments and re-submit the document for
> inclusion with the LDP main collection.
What happens in the case of a doc which was conditionally put into the
collection (due to the doc not being reviewed within 10 days) ? Per
the above policy, it could stay in the collection forever if the author
fails to do anything with the review comments. So if the document is in
our collection, even if conditionally, then we should not be willing to
wait forever for the author to act on the review comments.
> The LDP can refuse any document after review and subsequent revision if
> that document does not meet the organization's standards.
This somehow sounds too negative.
> Review policy
> Documentation is expected to be of high quality.
I would say "satisfactory" instead of "high". I think we should accept
most useful documentation. Documents may be useful even if not of high
quality. Yes, high quality is our goal but it may have to wait until we
can get a lot more financial and/or volunteer support.
> LDP staff members have the right to call for a technical review of the
> document if it does not meet the LDP standards.
If it doesn't meet our "standards" (whatever this means) it implies that
we don't accept it. So it's non sequitur to call for a technical review
of something we don't accept. We can have priorities for conducting
reviews and do those first.
> NOTE: For review procedures, see the "Reviewers HOWTO."
There are a number of serious flaws in the above. I'll point them out
later.
>
> Unmaintained document policy Documents are placed in "unmaintained"
> status when the original authors surrender the ownership of the
> document . An unmaintained document is available for new
> maintainership by contacting a staff member or a public LDP list.
Authors don't surrender ownership. Who would they surrender it to?
Since the authors own the copyright to their document, they are under no
obligation to surrender their rights. Even asking them to do so would
often by considered an insult.
Also, my proposed scheme of document status splits up unmaintained into
a few different categories and in my outline there is no "unmaintained"
classification (status) per se. But there are other statuses that when
put together encompass "unmaintained"
>
> Documents that are unmaintained and out-of-date can be archived by the LDP
> staff at the suggestion of LDP members or general community agreement.
Per my proposal there is no "archived" status.
David Lawyer
