[CF-metadata] CF procedures: some observations

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:26:57 +0100

Dear Jon

I am sorry you are frustrated. I sympathise with your frustrations. We should
indeed make the website clearer about the instructions.

Your bottom line is correct:

> This all comes down
> to a lack of time on everybody's part. Is it not time to consider
> applying for funds to employ more people to be dedicated to CF? I
> would have thought that the community would strongly support this.

We (the conventions committee and a few others) are pursuing this. I think it
is essential for the future development of CF that we employ people whose job
is to work on it. I agree that it should be obvious, but in practice, who in
"the community" will pay for it? A great many organisations benefit from what
has been done voluntarily to define CF, but very few of them are likely to be
eager to support it. They would want to know why it is their responsibility in
particular to do so, and not someone else's. How would you make a case to NCEO
or the Met Office, for instance, that they should fund a member of staff to
work on CF for the benefit of the world?

A change cannot be agreed without detailed text being proposed, because there
is no-one who has time to work out the detailed text in response to a proposal.
The original document authors you refer to, such as me, are not employed to
work on CF, any more than you are. We all have other full-time jobs. There are
no "developers" behind the scenes to do it for us. It does indeed take hours of
our time. Many other people have likewise contributed hours of their time to
developing proposals on trac and the email list. Of course, we all recognise
that it is a severe problem that none of us has enough time for it.

There is another reason, though, I think, which is that the devil is often in
the detail. Once something has been agreed in principle, agreeing exactly how
to do it still requires discussion. Even if we did have people to work on it,
I think the details would still be debated and decided in public.

Your participation is of course welcome. I do hope you will stick it out!

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Fri Jun 27 2008 - 04:26:57 BST