| Date issued: | 2005-02-19 |
|---|---|
| Status of document: | Draft Standard. This is only a preliminary draft that is still under development; it has not yet been presented to the whole community for review. |
| This version: | http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/process-20050219.html |
| Latest version: | http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/process.html |
| Previous version: | None. |
| Abstract: |
This document summarizes the governing ideas of the GOLD Community (i.e. the purpose, vision, and core values) and then describes how the GOLD Community is organized and how it operates. |
| Editors: | William Lewis, California State University Fresno <mailto:wlewis@csufresno.edu> Gary Simons, SIL International <mailto:gary_simons@sil.org> |
| Changes since previous version: |
This is the initial draft. It was created by adapting the OLAC Process document. |
Copyright © 2005 Baden Hughes, University of Melbourne; William Lewis, California State University Fresno; Gary Simons, SIL International. . This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
References
This document is the standard that defines how the GOLD Community is organized and how it operates. It begins by describing the purpose and vision of the GOLD Community and the five core values which guide the GOLD Community's operation. With this foundation, it sets out the organizational structure, defines three types of documents along with a document process governing the means by which they become adopted by the community, and defines a working group process by means of which documents may be created.
The GOLD Community builds on the infrasttucture established by the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) and this GOLD Communikty Process standard is modeled after the [OLAC-Process] standard. That standard in turn adapted many ideas from the process documents of four other standards efforts: [DCMI-Process], [IETF-Process], [OASIS-Process], and [W3C-Process]. The organization and process defined for the GOLD Community are much simpler, however, than the latter four. This is fitting since the GOLD Community is a small community with limited resources and—like most open source projects—it crucially depends upon the volunteer participation of many part-time members.
In a successful enterprise, the participants have shared purpose, vision, and core values. These are what Peter Senge calls the "governing ideas" of the enterprise [Senge94]. The governing ideas answer three critical questions: "Why?" "What?" and "How?" Together they answer the question, "What do we believe in?"
Purpose (or mission) is the "Why?"—the enterprise's answer to the question, "Why do we exist?"
Vision is the "What?"—the picture of the future the enterprise seeks to create.
Core values are the "How?"—these answer the question, "How do we want to act consistent with our mission, along the path toward achieving our vision?"
The purpose (or mission) of the GOLD Community is as follows:
The GOLD Community is an international partnership of institutions and individuals who are creating a global infrastructure that will allow our combined knowledge about the world's languages to be compared. It does so by:
developing GOLD (the General Ontology for Linguistic Description) as the basis for interoperation among language resources,
developing standards and recommendations for how to achieve interoperation using GOLD, and
developing resources, tools, and services that support interoperation by complying with those standards and recommendations.
The vision of the GOLD Community is described elsewhere in [GOLD-Vision] and shares much in common with the Open Language Archives Vision [OLAC-Vision]. In a nutshell, it is that:
By agreeing on a shared ONTOLOGY of linguistic concepts and on a shared infrastructure for INTEROPERATION, the linguistics community will be able to produce RESOURCES that describe individual languages in a comparable way, to develop TOOLS that produce these comparable resources, and to query SERVICES that aggregate as many comparable resources as are available.
The following core values guide the means that the GOLD Community employs to achieve its vision:
- Interoperation
By interoperation we mean the ability of resources describing languages to be so comparable that they can work together in a common database. The OLAC initiative defines a standard for the metadata descriptions of language resources so that those may interoperate in a combned catalog of all participating archives; the resources themselves, however, are not interoperable since they may have idiosyncratic terminology and markup. The GOLD initiative takes interoperation to the next level by defining standards that allow idiosyncratic resources to be mapped to common representations that can interoperate in a combined database.
- Openness
By open we mean "freely available to all interested parties." This implies visibility, accessibility, and reusability. The ontology itself and all the documents published by the GOLD Community are open. The metadata for all compliant resources are open (and participants are encouraged to make the make the resources themselves open as well). The processes by which those documents are developed are also open. Individual membership in the GOLD Community and its working groups is open to all interested parties.
- Consensus
Decision making in the GOLD Community is governed by the principle of consensus. A proposed standard or recommendation is adopted only when those who have reviewed it share substantial agreement that it is ready to be adopted by the community. This principle does not require unanimous consent, but requires far more than a simple majority. As a rule-of-thumb, decisions in the GOLD Community should be based on at least 80% agreement. In the Advisory Board and Council, consensus is achieved when no more than one member objects to a proposal.
- Empowering the players
The standard protocols and processes that define the framework for the community are not set by an executive committee or by members who have paid dues. Rather, they are set by those who are actually "playing the game." The only price paid by participating institutions is to implement the standards of the community. The greatest voice in the consensus process that sets the standards and recommendations of the community will be given to those who are most active in implementing them.
- Peer review
As a part of the academic community, the GOLD Community places a high value on peer review. All of the standards and documents of the GOLD Community go through a process of peer review that is open to all who want to participate. To assure quality within its network of interoperating repositories and services, the GOLD Community solicits anonymous peer review regarding conformance of participating institutions to its standards and recommendations. In addition it supports signed peer review for evaluations it does not solicit.
This section describes the organization of the GOLD Community in terms of the groups of participants that play key roles. This document only defines the groups; see [GOLD-Organization] on the the GOLD Community web site for a complete list of the current participants.
- Coordinators
The persons who oversee the operation of the process described in this document, relying on input from the Advisory Board as needed.
- Advisory Board
The members of the advisory board are persons who are recognized by their peers as being leaders within a subcommunity (whether defined by discipline or by geography) of the wider language description community. They serve at the invitation of the the GOLD Community Coordinators. The term of service is two years and is renewable. The role of an advisory board member is two-fold: to advise the Coordinators about how to respond to particular concerns of their subcommunities, and to promote the GOLD Community within their subcommunities.
- Council
A panel of individuals (numbering from seven to nine) who make decisions for the community as described below in The document process. Members of the Council must have experiential knowledge of the GOLD Community gained through being involved in the development of the ontology itself or of resources, tools, or services that comply with it. They must also be willing and able to commit time and energy to the functions of the Council. Geographic and domain distribution of members is relevant, but will not override the other criteria. Council members serve a term of two years, renewable. Council members are nominated by the Coordinators and ratified by consensus of the Advisory Board.
- Providers of Resources, Tools, and Services
Individuals and institutions who are providing resources, tools, and services that follow the GOLD Community standards or recommendations and who have successfully deposited metadata describing their materials with an OLAC data provider so that it has been harvested by the registry of resources, tools, and services at the GOLD Community web site.
- Working Groups
Groups of individuals who participate in the GOLD Community process by drafting documents that are eventually submitted to the community as proposed standards, recommendations, or notes. A working group may also be formed for the purpose of cooperating in the implementation of standards, recommendations, or notes. For each working group, there is a chairperson who serves as the designated contact person.
- Participating Individuals
Members of the wider user community who are interested in participating in the GOLD Community process. They become individual members by subscribing to the general mailing list on the GOLD Community web site. As subscribers they receive all community-wide announcements, which include invitations to participate in newly formed working groups and to give comments on all proposed GOLD Community documents when they are put to the community for review.
A key aspect of the GOLD Community process is how documents are developed and promulgated, for it is through documents that GOLD Community defines itself and the practices that it promotes. The documents published by the GOLD Community are of three types:
- Standard
A standard describes procedures that providers must follow when participating in the activities of the community or specifications they must follow when developing a resource, tool, or service.
- Recommendation
A recommendation describes the GOLD Community's consensus on the best current practice regarding ways of using the GOLD ontology. Providers of resources, tools, and services are encouraged, but not required, to follow these recommendations. The public review of resources, tools, and services may include an assessment of degree of conformance to recommended practices.
- Note
A note is any document published by the GOLD Community that is neither a standard nor a recommendation. One purpose of notes is to ensure that standards and recommendations stay focused on rules and principles. Extended discussion or details of implementations should be treated separately in supporting notes. Another purpose for notes is to provide a venue for perspectives that are not widely held. For instance, a note could be:
Experimental. A note could propose a new or different approach that is not mature enough to be put forward as a standard or a recommendation but that has enough merit to put forward within the community for peer review.
Informational. A note could give helpful information related to some aspect of a standard or recommendation, such as a description of historical background, an elaboration, a rationale, a non-normative explanation, or even an alternative viewpoint.
Implementational. A note could give a description of a particular approach to implementing a standard or recommendation.
The GOLD Community document process defines how documents get endorsed and published by the GOLD Community. This involves moving through a life cycle that has six possible status categories. Each status is defined in terms of the activities that are required for advancing it to the next status:
- Draft
A document has draft status as soon as it enters the process. It may enter by one of two means. (1) Any working group may create a draft document. (2) An author who is not part of a working group may submit a draft document to the GOLD Community Coordinators. In the latter case, the Coordinators have two options: they may choose for the document to be processed in a working group (either by directing the author to join an existing working group or by assisting the author to form a new one), or they may solicit feedback from reviewers of their choice.
A document remains under development with draft status until either its developers choose to withdraw it from the process, or the people processing it (whether a working group or the Coordinators with ad hoc reviewers) reach consensus that the document is ready to be presented to the entire community as a proposal.
- Proposed
When a document achieves proposed status, the GOLD Community Coordinators send a call for review with a specific deadline date to the entire community. The basic question that is asked of reviewers depends on the type of document:
Standard. Is the document ready to serve the GOLD Community as a standard? (Reviewers should agree with the content since they will be obligated to follow it.)
Recommendation. Is the document ready to be put forward to the language resources community as recommended best practice? (Reviewers should agree that the described practice will produce high-quality resources, tools, and services, though they are not obligated to follow the practice.)
Note. Is the document ready for publication? (Reviewers are not asked to agree with all the content, only to agree that it is of adequate quality to be published.)
At the end of the review period, the Coordinators and the Council deliberate concerning the feedback that is received. By consensus, they reach one of five outcomes:
Release. The document is ready as-is to be promoted to the next stage in the life cycle.
Revise. The document is nearly ready for promotion to the next stage, but the editors should make specified revisions and a final review made by the Coordinators and Council before it is promoted.
Resubmit. The response to the call for review was inadequate. Thus the document should be submitted back to the whole community for an additional period of review.
Rework. The document needs substantial rework. When the editors complete the next version, it should be submitted again for review by the whole community.
Reject. The document is not well founded or is not adequately relevant in the context of the GOLD Community, and should be withdrawn from the process.
The outcome of the review is reported to the whole community via the general mailing list.
Standards, recommendations, and some notes require implementation and community experience to ensure that they are ready for adoption. These documents are promoted to candidate status and enter a testing phase. Notes that require no implementation may go straight to adoption.
- Candidate
When a document enters candidate status, the GOLD Community Coordinators send a call for implementation with a specific deadline date to the entire community. The implementation period will be set for a duration not shorter than one month nor longer than six months, depending on the anticipated difficulty of implementation. At the end of the testing period, a call for review is issued in which the community members who have actually put the document to use are invited to describe their experience and comment on whether it is ready to advance to adoption, potentially with changes they might recommend. The process for evaluating the results of the review and advancing to adopted status is as described for the proposed stage.
- Adopted
A document may remain in the adopted status for an indefinite period. Its status remains as adopted until the Coordinators and Council make a decision to move it to retired status. (Once adopted a document may not be withdrawn; it may only be retired.)
- Retired
A document attains retired status only upon a decision of the Coordinators and Council. It typically happens automatically when it is superseded by the adoption of a newer version of the same document. A document may also be superseded by the adoption of an altogether different document, or may be judged to have simply outlived its usefulness.
- Withdrawn
The status of a document changes to withdrawn when it is removed from the document process before attaining adopted status.
Changes to adopted documents. In the case of corrections or editorial refinements, the GOLD Community Coordinators may authorize a new version of an adopted document without going through community review. However, any substantive changes must be processed through the Council. The Council will determine the status of the revised document: whether the changes are minor enough to adopt the revision without a round of testing, whether it should become a candidate so as to invoke a period of testing, or whether the changes are so great that the document should revert to proposed status so as to invoke a call for review by the whole community. When the new version is in candidate or proposed status, its header section must show a link to the adopted version that is currently in force.
Documenting dissent. The appropriate place for the discussion of dissenting opinions about aspects of a document is in the mailing list for the working group that has sponsored the document. In this way the alternative ideas will not be lost, but will become part of the permanent archive of the working group's mailing list. At any time, dissenting ideas may be given a more prominent form by developing them into an experimental note that proposes an alternative approach or into an informational note that discusses the relative merits of different approaches.
Intellectual property rights. All documents published by the GOLD Community on its web site are published under the terms of the Open Publication License [OPL]. Typically, the authors or editors of the document will be listed as the copyright holders.
Working groups play a fundamental role in the GOLD Community process as the primary source of the documents that enter the GOLD Community document process. In keeping with the GOLD Community core value of openness, working groups are open to observation and participation by any member of the community. They are self-organizing in that members of the community may recognize the need for a working group and set it up on their own initiative.
Formation. A working group is formed by three or more individual members of the GOLD Community who represent at least three different institutions. In order to form a working group, the prospective group must submit the following to the GOLD Community Coordinators:
the name of the working group
a statement of purpose that is germane to the purpose of the GOLD Community
the names and email addresses of members representing at least three different institutions
the name of the chairperson
a list of planned documents and the projected date for completing the development phase of each
When the above conditions are satisfactorily met, the GOLD Community Coordinators will set up a web page for the working group and a mailing list that is seeded with the initial membership list. The GOLD Community Coordinators will also be subscribed to the mailing list as a way of keeping informed of the working group’s activities. When the web page and mailing list are in place, a call for participation will be sent out to the entire GOLD Community. Any person who wants to participate in the development of the planned documents may subscribe to the mailing list and thereby become a member of the working group.
Chairperson. The working group chairperson serves as the point of contact with the GOLD Community Coordinators concerning the activities of the working group. The chairperson is responsible to keep the working group moving toward completing the documents listed on its web page and to communicate changes of plans for the working group to the GOLD Community Coordinators. A chairperson may resign or may be removed by a 2/3 vote of the working group members. A vacancy is filled by election from among members of the working group.
Meetings. Working groups typically conduct their business electronically, via their web page and their mailing list. If and when working groups do want to meet by teleconference or face-to-face, the working group members or their institutions will bear such costs.
Activities. The most concerted activity of a working group takes place while its documents are in the draft stage. Once a document reaches proposed status, the working group gets involved only when the community review calls for major revisions. Such revisions should be vetted within the working group before the document is resubmitted for community-wide review.
Decision making. The decision making within a working group will generally be done informally by gauging the sense of the traffic on the mailing list. However, silence should not necessarily be taken as consensus. At critical decision points, the chairperson should ask working group members for explicit feedback to ensure that consensus has indeed been achieved.
Dissolution. A working group will remain constituted as long as it is making progress towards developing planned documents or as long as documents it has developed are in proposed or candidate status. When these conditions are no longer met, the working group may elect to dissolve itself or may be dissolved by the GOLD Community Coordinators.
| [DCMI-Process] | Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - Structure and
Operation. <http://dublincore.org/documents/1999/05/31/dcmi-structure/> Guidelines for Dublin Core Working Groups - Working Draft 1.4. <http://dublincore.org/documents/1999/06/02/wgguidelines/> Dublin Core Usage Board Administrative Processes. <http://dublincore.org/usage/documents/process/> |
| [GOLD-Organization] | GOLD Community: Organization. <http://???> |
| [GOLD-Vision] | The GOLD Community Vision. <http://???> |
| [IETF-Process] | Internet Standards Process - RFC
2026. <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt> |
| [OASIS-Process] | OASIS [Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards] Technical Committee Process Overview.
<http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml> A Scalable Process for Information Standards, by Jon Bosak. <http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/17/oasisprocess.html> |
| [OLAC-Organization] | OLAC
Organization. <http://www.language-archives.org/organization.html> |
| [OLAC-Process] | OLAC Process
<http://www.language-archives.org/process.html> |
| [OLAC-Vision] | The Seven Pillars of Open Language Archiving: A
Vision Statement.
<http://www.language-archives.org/docs/vision.html> |
| [OPL] | Open Publication
License. <http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/> |
| [Senge94] | The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, by Peter M, Senge. New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994. See especially, "Anchoring vision in a set of governing ideas," pages 223-225. |
| [W3C-Process] | World Wide Web Consortium Process
Document. <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010208/> |