Re: Why Design Principles?

On Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:30:13 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>  
wrote:

> The actual level of dissent over the Design Principles is quite low. The  
> number of objectors is rather small, the disagreements do not rise to  
> the level of Formal Objections, and many are over form, not substance.

I think there is a difference between "people are generally ok with  
publishing the thing as a *working draft*" and "Almost nobody has any  
substantive objections". I am concerned that if we set a pattern for  
simply ignoring disagreement because that helps us work faster, we will  
carry that through to more important issues.

> ...The level of dissent is lower than for HTML5, and the stakes are much  
> lower as well. If we can't come to reasonable agreement here, then how  
> will we ever resolve much harder issues?

By focusing on on building consensus around the things that actually  
matter, and not distracting ourselves with documents whose usefulness is  
questioned by some and acknowledged as ultimately limited by others?

As you note, while the design principles clearly note that everyone cares  
about accessibility, the impact in practice is zero, and there is no clear  
agreement on how to apply the principle in combination with others, nor  
even on its own. And this is one of the fundamentals that you list as  
non-negotiable...

cheers

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:19:18 UTC