It's fair to say that the User Guide took a few steps towards nailing
down a common model (assumptions, goals, and definitions) that properly
belong in a separate document. I believe that establishing this kind
of foundation in a separate document is of the highest priorty for
progress at the next workshop. It should have the added attraction
of shrinking the User Guide.
The lack of explicit common model weakens our work because meaningful
consensus cannot be built on the belief that one's own vague received
impression is the same as someone else's received impression. Personally,
I've often been unable to participate in entire DC discussion threads
because I had too many entry-level questions, such as, which DC users are
you thinking of, what phase of discovery do you mean by that, how does
that proposed feature impact our other goals, and by the way what are our
goals, priorities, etc. Not infrequently such a thread comes to rest at
a false sense of closure, from which it wanders off a few months later
because we never had a good grip on it. Some of us have been working
on draft foundation documents that I hope will be proposed soon.
-John
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