[Members] XSF membership: what does it mean?

[Dave Cridland]

On Wed Nov  5 15:57:12 2008, Jonathan Schleifer wrote:
> About the reviewing stuff, I think it should be split up into  
> several  work groups

This can be useful for "expert review". But we also need "general  
review", and "proof-reading". Sometimes the latter two pick up errors  
we'd otherwise miss.

> (Don't get  me wrong, I'm not saying that the Council doesn't know  
> what it's  doing,

Okay, then - I will.

The Council's there to provide an objective overview of the big  
picture. We cannot and do not have an intricate knowledge of audio  
codecs, or GPS characteristics, or whatever else might be needed. So  
we don't always know what we're doing. This is where expert review  
comes in.

Also, we're only human, and cannot spot every error, and we're  
sometimes so far "into" these specifications we fail to see how much  
knowledge is assumed - this is entirely the opposite of being an  
expert, and is where general review comes in.
Finally, we're not copy editors by trade, and while we've only one  
non-native English speaker - and Ralph's English is perfect anyway -  
this means we're prone to, perhaps, not noticing confusing uses of  
English. So simple proof-reading is very useful, making sure that our  
specifications remain clear and useful.

This isn't limited to specifications which are under active scrutiny,  
too - we've a lot of specs, some of them largely untouched for years,  
and updating or polishing those is a mammoth task.

Dave.
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