Re: ebXML list of participants

[Murray Maloney <murray@muzmo.com>]

Ed,

First, let me thank you for your kind offer to assist in an editorial role.
While I have no authority to take you up on your offer, you can be sure
that I will note your name and mention your offer whenever it seems 
that your services might be appropriate. If you have read any of these
specs, you will already know that they could all be helped by applying
the services of a professional editor.

Second, although the custom of publishing the mail list participants
may yet continue, I have to disagree with your reasons for doing so.
The membership of STC pays for the privilege of being listed, whereas
ebXML's members do not contribute to the expenses. Karl was asking
advice on this matter, not because he has a low opinion of 'lurkers'
but because he is concerned about expending scarce resources.

While I agree that it serves all of our careers to have our names 
associated with prominent organizations, it is not a primary function
of those organizations to promote our careers.

Finally, if you offered to do the work of maintaining the list, I think
that you would have a lot stronger case -- morally -- than you do now.
Even though I doubt that Karl could farm out this task, it would be
a nice offer. :-)

Regards,

Murray



At 08:17 AM 1/19/01 -0600, Ed Manley wrote:
>I feel I must reply on this issue. I am a lurker. In my current role as a
>Senior Business Analyst at CommerceQuest and as a career consultant Business
>Analyst and Technical Writer my livelihood depends on staying current in all
>areas of technology that pertain to software development and business
>process. I will never again code, gave that up twenty plus years ago, so I
>don't need to know enough ebXML to develop systems, but I will always work
>directly with developers and business environments that do. I can hardly
>write requirements documents for ebXML systems if I don't know anything
>about ebXML. I certainly can't design and document business processes and
>transactions if I don't understand the underlying technology. Therefore it
>is critical that I belong to bodies such as this, that I learn as much as
>possible from whomever is possible; ergo, Thank You, I greatly appreciate
>being permitted to "lurk" here.
>Beyond that, I have to constantly sell myself. If I state to a prospective
>employer that I am a member of this listserv, and that I use it as a
>continuing education tool so that I can competently work with ebXML
>implementation, then they must be able to verify that. If you dismiss me as
>a lurker from your published membership list you do me a great disfavor. As
>a member of STC and IEEE I am listed and recognized, yet no more a direct
>contributor there than here.
>I submit that by lurking here, learning ebXML and promoting its use, and
>working with ebXML as it gains industry acceptance, I am in fact a
>contributor to the cause and not a lurker at all.
>Finally, I have twice offered my services as editor and technical writer to
>help develop and maintain documentation created by this body, and have had
>no response. I will be an active member and contributor to the cause should
>anyone take me up on my offer.
>All that being said, I reiterate my plea that those of us who enroll and
>lurk be publicly listed as participants.
>Thank you,
>Ed Manley
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>
>To: Martin W Sachs <mwsachs@us.ibm.com>
>Cc: <ebxml-awareness@lists.ebxml.org>; <ebxml-stc@lists.ebxml.org>
>Sent: 2001. January 18. 14:24
>Subject: RE: ebXML list of participants
>
>
>> Well,it's not an amalgamation of listserv lists, which only have email
>> addresses; it's the name and company name (but not email address) of each
>> person who is subscribed. We get this from the innformation submitted on
>the
>> subscription form. We're building some functionality at OASIS that could,
>> incidentally, be used to manage this, but this won't be done for a while.
>>
>> I'm just wondering about the usefulness of this information on the web
>site.
>> If it's useful we'll devote the labour to make it work; I just want to
>make
>> sure that we should.
>>
>> </karl>
>> ============================================================
>> Karl F. Best
>> OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
>> 978.667.5115 x206
>> karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org
>>
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Martin W Sachs [mailto:mwsachs@us.ibm.com]
>> > Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 2:44 PM
>> > To: Karl Best
>> > Cc: ebxml-awareness@lists.ebxml.org; ebxml-stc@lists.ebxml.org; Karl
>> > Subject: Re: ebXML list of participants
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Karl,
>> >
>> > First of all, if your list of participants is an amalgamation of all the
>> > listserver subscriber lists, and you are doing it by hand, I support not
>> > doing it by hand. Isn't there a tool that can simply produce a
>> > composite of
>> > all the listserver subscriber lists?
>> >
>> > As to who is really a participant, that's a potential nest of
>> > rattlesnakes.
>> > I doubt that there is an answer.  A composite list of all ebXML meeting
>> > attendees would include a lot of lurkers and miss people who are active
>on
>> > email but can't get to meetings.
>> > A composite of the participant lists from the individual specifications
>> > would miss people because the teams aren't necessarily keeping them up
>to
>> > date and some team leads (like me) haven't built the list yet.
>> >
>> > I suggest:
>> >
>> >    Automate the composite list of the listserver subscribers if this
>> >    composite list is needed.
>> >
>> >    Build a composite meeting attendee list, labelled as such, if it is
>> >    needed.
>> >
>> >    Otherwise "don't go there".
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Marty
>> >
>> > ******************************************************************
>> > *******************
>> >
>> > Martin W. Sachs
>> > IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
>> > P. O. B. 704
>> > Yorktown Hts, NY 10598
>> > 914-784-7287;  IBM tie line 863-7287
>> > Notes address:  Martin W Sachs/Watson/IBM
>> > Internet address:  mwsachs @ us.ibm.com
>> > ******************************************************************
>> > *******************
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org> on 01/18/2001 02:17:13 PM
>> >
>> > To:   ebxml-awareness@lists.ebxml.org, ebxml-stc@lists.ebxml.org
>> > cc:   Karl <karl.best@oasis-open.org>
>> > Subject:  ebXML list of participants
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > OASIS IT staff has been maintaining the ebXML list of participants
>> > (http://www.ebxml.org/participants/participants.htm) by hand, and adding
>> > new
>> > names every few weeks. This isn't really a list of people who
>participate,
>> > but rather a list of people who subscribe to any the ebXML lists,
>whether
>> > they particpate or not. (Given the numbers, it's actually a list of
>> > lurkers:
>> > there's ~2000 people on the list, but probably only a couple hundred of
>> > those really participate.)
>> >
>> > My question is whether we should make the effort to continue to keep
>this
>> > list current. Over 900 people have subscribed to the mail lists
>> > in the past
>> > five weeks! Do we want those 900 people added (by hand) to the
>> > participants
>> > list? I think anyone who is truly participating has been doing so
>> > for quite
>> > some time, so the people subscribing now are just lurking.
>> >
>> > So, we can either 1) continue to manually add new people to the list as
>> > they
>> > subscribe, 2) stop adding people and just leave it where it's at today,
>or
>> > 3) actually come up with a list of participants (defined as what?) and
>> > publish that list on the web page.
>> >
>> > Feedback, please.
>> >
>> > </karl>
>> > ============================================================
>> > Karl F. Best
>> > OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
>> > 978.667.5115 x206
>> > karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>