off-list or public discussions

I have received a question from an HP colleague as to why some of the 
discussion reported in:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2004Oct/0114.html

"Response to DAWG on Best Practice for Data Access"
from
Phil Tetlow

took place off-list rather than in public (e.g. cc-ed to the WG list or 
to www-archive@w3.org)

Our general expectation in participating in this public WG is that the 
work of the WG is conducted in public (except with good reason).

Personally I think this is particularly important given the number of 
TFs and the difficulty of tracking everything, an archived copy of the 
work as it gets done is a useful resource if and when something one 
wasn't tracking becomes significant.

In this particular case, while Phil has posted the complete thread, 
formatting issues make it harder to read than it would be following the 
thread through the web archive.

Jeremy