Re: Proposal to Adopt HTML5 (progress on recruiting editors)

On Apr 18, 2007, at 4:38 PM, Dan Connolly wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 16:07 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
>>  Who has been asked? Have any
>> of them expressed willingness or unwillingness to serve? I think the
>> Working Group deserves to know, and it is inappropriate for the
>> chairs to keep secrets from the group for an extended period.
>
> With respect, I disagree. Information about who has been
> asked and how they responded and why is not in the technical
> scope of the WG, and public discussion of it doesn't seem
> likely to be useful.
>
> Just by way of example, medical reasons factor heavily
> into one of the discussions.

I do not think it is important or appropriate to publicly state the  
reasons a given person declined. Or if someone declined and didn't  
want it publicized that they were even asked, I think that would be ok.

But I do think the chairs hunting for an editor without any  
transparency to the rest of the working group is questionable thing  
to do, for a public-process working group especially. If chairs act  
on behalf of the group, they have an obligation to report back.

Here are the reasons I think information about the chair recruiting  
effort may be useful to the rest of the group:

1) Others may wish to propose their own candidates for editor - it  
would be useful to know who is already being considered and who has  
been ruled out.

2) Some candidates on the list may be objectionable to various  
parties in the group, just as the team of "just Ian Hickson" is  
apparently objectionable to you and Chris. By the way, I'd like to  
know the nature of the objection. Why do you guys think this will be  
a problem, and are your objections being made as chairs, or as  
representatives of your respective organizations? If the latter, then  
I think we have a serious process problem here. Any other  
organization that objected to a nominated editor would have to make  
their case to the chairs and to the working group, but you guys are  
bypassing that.

3) Some may wish to privately encourage potential candidates.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 23:57:23 UTC